Waluigi deserves his own game. (Coldest take of all time.) That said, whilst Mario's platforming adventures have been spoofed by Wario's in the past, and Luigi's got a series that really lets him step out from his brother's shadow, Waluigi feels a little... odder, with his cheating tendencies and strange proportions making him well-suited to sports games - but come on, he's been in more than enough of them already! Or has he...
Waluigi's Pinball Party!!
Basic Concept: A pinball game based around the
Super Mario series, but completely different to
Mario Pinball Land. As well as a story mode consisting of various different pinball tables and the like, as well as interactions with other characters, this game is set apart by the introduction of unusual modifiers and abilities, as well as Waluigi having the ability to shake the pinball table itself. I think this works for a few reasons - Waluigi Pinball is his most well-known
Mario Kart track, Waluigi himself is known as a cheater but is also typically a technical and precision-oriented character, and him having his own spin-off seems like a good opportunity to do something different with him.
Controls: Presuming this game is a Switch release, I'd want to make it use the Joy-Cons in some way. By default, you'd use various buttons for different effects - for instance, trigger/shoulder buttons would work well for the paddles, and you could pull down on the joystick to pull back on the ball launcher. In addition to this, the face buttons may be used to activate certain things like items or modifiers. However, you can also
shake the Joy-Cons in order to shake the table, altering the movement of the ball! Waluigi's a scoundrel - the rules are nothing but a suggestion to this lanky purple... plumber?
Gameplay: In terms of gameplay, the meat of this game is a collection of Mario-themed pinball tables. Now, there's a variety of different tables to see, and modes and the like - but first, how the camera works. When in docked/horizontal mode, the screen scrolls with the ball itself by default, but you can choose to have the entire table on-screen if you desire. However, if in handheld mode, you can play in vertical mode - tilting the Switch to its side in order to see the whole table without incident. There's also a story mode, which works with basic visual novel-like cutscenes - no voiced dialogue, just different character sounds, written text, and 2D art. This basically takes you through all kinds of different tables themed after different elements of the
Mario universe. I'll get into this later!
Otherwise, there's a few other neat things - most notably,
Modifiers! These work like items in the main series, but affect your ball instead of the actual player. Of course, some stages would have items of their own - a POW Block, for instance, makes a lot of sense for a
Super Mario Bros. 2/USA themed table. Whilst there'd be
tons of modifiers to play with, here's some I can picture off the top of my head:
- Mini-Mushroom: The ball becomes lightweight and tiny, getting knocked around faster than ever before!
- Bob-Omb: The ball detonates on contact with a gimmick, removing the gimmick from the field!
- Green Shell: The ball is no longer gravity-affected, but still bounces off things - becoming a green shell!
- Double Cherry: The ball splits off from one... into two! Double the points... but double the risk...
- Tanooki: The ball gains a tail, now being capable of spinning it around itself to damage enemies close to it!
- Super Crown: The ball becomes... Pinballette?? Now it's a character you can control and run around with for a short time!
- Warp Whistle: The ball gets caught up in a tornado and moves up the table before being released!
The possibilities are
endless!!! And, of course, there'd be wayy more than this - I can imagine at least 15 being introduced. I want this game to have a deliberately weird and bizarre vibe befitting of Waluigi, so having strange and unusual modifiers that you'd probably never see in another pinball game of this kind seems like a fun way to handle it.
Story: So, this is more of a loose concept, but here's the idea. Waluigi, seeing his arch rival Luigi becoming successful in all kinds of things, decides to hit up Wario in order to pitch a new scheme... but Wario's busy running a "legitimate" business in the form of WarioWare! With that, Waluigi - being the cheeky scoundrel he is - takes inspiration from Wario's idea of selling games, and decides he will become a pinball champion... the catch being that, well, he needs a pinball table to do that. As such, he enters an arcade in Diamond City and accidentally buys it off an elderly, now-retired Toad - so now, he's the de-facto pinball champ of the town! He'll need to keep that reputation up, though, as it seems everyone's suddenly getting the same idea...
Also, yeah, this means he's going up against different characters from the
Mario series! That said, I'd like him to go up against a couple of oddballs, as well as characters in different attires to usual - for instance, a late-game opponent might be Wario, but in his
WarioWare attire, or Luigi, but in his casino attire from the minigames in
New Super Mario Bros. Likewise, there might also be more obscure characters like Foreman Spike, Mad Piano, Boshi, and Stanley the Bugman for him to go up against. And, of course, some heavy-hitters - your Mario, Bowser, Peach and so forth.
Tables: Probably the biggest selling point of this game will be the various unique tables that you can play on, given we're not beholden to the rules of typical pinball, and can base them on different elements of the
Mario universe. Whilst I can imagine a pretty sizable number of tables appearing - maybe up to 30? - I've got a couple of ideas that might work. One note to make is that these are all actual pinball tables in-universe - so enemies are given a slightly robotic, stylised look loosely akin to the
Mario vs. Donkey Kong series's Minis.
- Super Mario Bros. 2: This table's main mechanic is Subcon, which "flips" the table over when you enter certain doors (revealed by sending the ball into certain pipes.) Subcon is full of high-scoring items, but you can only be there for up to 10 seconds at a time - so to build up your score, you'll want to avoid the Shyguys and Ninjis and get into there as much as you can.
- Wrecking Crew: This stage's main goal is simple - knock down "floors" at the top of the table. To do that, you'll need to continually aim the pinball to certain pillars whilst avoiding Eggplant Men and Gotchawrenches, getting a big point count for each "floor" you take down. Be careful, though - you don't want the pinball to get stuck in a Barrel!
- WarioWare: A pinball table stylised after the gameplay of the WarioWare series, this one has different "minigames" that give you certain requirements - if you can fulfil them quickly enough, you'll get big points! That said, the occasional appearances of various WarioWare employees on the board will hinder your progress if you're not careful.
- Bowser's Castle: A table stylised on interpretations of Bowser's Castle, where you get the biggest number of points if you can get your pinball to hit an Axe that knocks the entire top half of the table away! Bear in mind, the top half is where Bowser's standing - and plenty of hazards like Fire Bars are present, so precision is rewarded more than anything here!
Conclusion: Even if this would be a smaller-scale title compared to some of the other
Mario series offerings, I think it'd be a great way for Waluigi to get his time in the spotlight in a natural way that somewhat acts as a celebration of the franchise's history on top of that, letting the purple-clad villain have a little bit of prominence beyond just acting as a tennis partner. It seems like a decently natural way for him to get represented in video-game form, plus I don't think there's been this much variation on the "video pinball" concept for some time!
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