How WarioWare Brought the Satanic Panic to Nintendo
Yes, I’m returning once again to Satanism in video games. What can I say? As a child of the 1980s, I was taught by the Satanic panic to think the Devil could be lurking in all forms of pop culture. I’m surprised I haven’t written more posts about this kind of thing.
In December, I wrote about how there’s a more or less direct allusion to the Devil in Wario’s Woods, a puzzle game released at the end of the NES’s lifespan. That sort of reference is unusual for a game starring Super Mario characters, but it’s not the only example of something uncharacteristically sinister being connected with one of the most family-friendly franchises out there… if you want to consider the WarioWare series to be part of the extended Super Mario universe. I’m not sure it is, but I’m going to contain that discussion to the miscellaneous notes section at the end of this piece. But for the moment, let’s say WarioWare is — just on the far side of the Wario Land games, and about as far from the Mushroom Kingdom as you can get.
In 2004, Nintendo released a fourth installment, WarioWare: Touched!!, and in doing so introduced players to Ashley, who’d go on to be one of the more popular characters in the franchise. She’s a Wednesday Addams-esque spooky girl who practices witchcraft and speaks in a deadpan tone. If that wasn’t enough to tell you this wasn’t the typically cutesy little girl you’d come to expect from a Mario game, Ashley is always accompanied by a devil named Red. Sure, he’s more the kind of cartoon devil you’d see advertising hot cinnamon candy, but it’s unmistakable what he is.
Easily one of the biggest reasons that Ashley broke out as much as she did was her theme song. It’s insanely catchy in a way that might remind you of the theme to Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, and the lyrics fairly straightforwardly explain what kind of character you’re dealing with. It’s very much a case of “tell, don’t show,” but it works nonetheless.
Have a listen. But be warned: It will stick in your head.
It’s the lyrics to Ashley’s song where we get into trouble, however. Have a look at the English version below. The song is done in a call-and-response style. The italicized lines are the one Ashley herself speaks; the rest are from the chorus of… ghosts or whatever.
Who’s the girl next door living in the haunted mansion?
You better learn my name ’cause I am Ashley!!
She knows the darkest spells and she brews the meanest potions
You might be the ingredient I seekDon’t let yourself be fooled by her innocent demeanor
You should be afraid of the great Ashley!
She doesn’t play with dolls, and she never combs her hair
Who has time for girly things like that?Eye of newt, I cast a hex on you
Grandma’s wig, this’ll make you big
Kitten Spitz, soon your pants won't fit
Pantalones Giganticus!
Oh no, not again!She could rule the world, and still finish all her homework
Everyone knows that I’m the greatest Ashley!
You better watch your step or she’ll cast a spell on you
I turned my teacher into a spoonI must flip through my spellbook, and yes it’s true
I don’t have as many friends as you.
But I think you're nice and maybe we could be friends
And if you say no, you’re toastWho's the girl next door living in the haunted mansion?
You better learn my name ’cause I am Ashley!
Just remember this when you see her on the street
I’m the cruelest girl you’ll ever meet
Now, I mentioned the Satanic panic in the opening paragraph of this article. It turns out WarioWare: Touched!! ended up playing into one of the biggest urban legends associated with that period of American paranoia: the idea of Satanic messages being coded into music in a way that would affect the listener’s mind — and also their soul, I suppose — without them realizing it. In the panic, it took the form of backmasking, a recording technique in which messages are inserted into audio backwards, meaning that only by playing something in reverse can it be understood. Probably the best-known instance of this predates the Satanic panic, although it was inadvertent on the artist’s part; the avant-garde 1968 Beatles track “Revolution 9” features a segment that when played backwards was interpreted by some fans to confirm an urban legend stating that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a look-alike. He didn’t, but if you want to go looking for “evidence” that he did, there’s plenty to find, including that sometimes the Beatles would implement backmasked messages intentionally, like they did on the 1966 single “Rain.”
This silliness would prove to be mere preface for the backmasking hysteria that would occur in the 1980s, when more than a few Evangelical Christians claimed to hear dark, disturbing or otherwise devilish messages in pop songs by playing them backwards. Among the bands accused of doing this were Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Jefferson Starship, Queen, Electric Light Orchestra and Styx. If you want to read more about what was allegedly encoded into these songs, you can do that here, but I’m not especially interested in cataloguing all of this because, frankly, it’s bullshit.
Anyone claiming to hear anything intelligible in these songs, Satanic or not, either fooled themselves into finding meaning in the nonsense syllables of reversed speech — the audio version of pareidolia, the phenomenon that allows us to see pictures in clouds and or that one sassy parking garage pillar — or they deliberately made it up to get attention. What’s more, there’s no indication that making people listen to messages in reverse actually makes them understand them in any way, to say nothing of converting previous faithful Christians into servants of the Antichrist. That said, claims to the contrary only died down when people stopped listening to music on record players, since most cassette and CD players don’t allow you to play things backwards. Until then, the danger posed by secret Satanic messages in music was, for some deluded people, a very real problem and a very real threat to American society.
I feel like most people who read this blog will understand the extent to which was discussed back in the 1980s, but if you think I’m overstating it, have a look at Deception of a Generation, a 90-minute discussion of these allegations between Phil Phillips, who authored the book Turmoil in the Toybox, and pastor Gary Greenwald. Among the pop culture entities accused of being emissaries of Satan are Scooby Doo, He-Man and She-Ra, ThunderCats, Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, E.T., G.I. Joe, comic book superheroes in general, Transformers, Voltron, Care Bears, the Littles, My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite and even the Smurfs. Of course, it all amounts to one long infomercial for even more media that worried parents could pay for — “for any donation of $15 or more.” Given that it covers the most popular toys of the decade, I’m actually shocked that it doesn’t mention video games at all.
(I actually had trouble finding a decent-looking, complete version of this video online, and so I stitched this together from bits I found here and there. Actually, I’m having a problem uploading my superior version, so for now I’m giving you the lower-res one from YouTube. “Enjoy”!)
WarioWare: Touched!! hit shelves well after backmasked Satanic messages stopped making headlines, so you could understand how Nintendo might have stumbled into a latter-day controversy more or less innocently. This WarioWare game was released for the Nintendo DS, which included a touchscreen and a stylus as a means of interacting with games. The subtitle attached to this entry in the WarioWare series is a heads-up that it would be making the most of this feature, just in the way that the previous one, WarioWare: Twisted!!, made the most of a gyroscopic sensor in the cartridge to detect angular movement. As a showcase for touchscreen controls, Twisted!! not only implemented them into the microgames but also into a host of app-like features that get especially weird. There’s a piano simulator, a flan simulator and even a Wario-branded version of Mario Paint. There’s also an old-fashioned turntable that lets you play music from the game.
You see where this is going.
Yes, because you could now play music slower, faster or in reverse, it didn’t take long for people to suspect that they heard an explicitly Satanic message in the little witch girl’s song. They weren’t playing it backwards, notably, but fast enough to skip every few syllables. And when sped up, the part where Ashley lists off various magic ingredients and what their effects would be ended up sounding like “I have granted the kids to hell.”
Here’s the audio, sped up.
The Super Mario Wiki page on the matter also shows where the various syllables in this alleged message come from in Ashley’s song. They appear in bold.
Eye of newt, I cast a hex on you
Grandma's wig, this’ll make you big
Kitten Spitz, soon your pants won’t fit
Pantalones Giganticus!
Obviously this is a nothing of a story, easily explained away, but it got picked up on gaming blogs from back in the day. Many of those are gone today, and I can’t only find the scantest traces of who actually wrote about it. Engadget did, based on something written by 4 Color Rebellion. IGN at least qualifies it as “kind of” sounding like what people claimed, while Games Radar is a little more certain of Ashley’s demonic intentions. I swear there were others; you will have to take my word for it, however. For what it’s worth, even Nintendo itself acknowledged the urban legend in the letters section of the July 2005 issue of Nintendo Power, ultimately dismissing it as “a (very) creepy coincidence.”
But all in all, it’s people churning out quick posts to feed a then-hungry blogosphere without discussing the history of alleged Satanic messages in music that all turned out to be bunkum, right?
Well, it would be, except for one strange thing. (And yes, that is one of my favorite podcasts.)
This whole time, we’ve been talking about the English lyrics to Ashley’s theme. Of course, before the game was translated into English, Ashley’s theme had Japanese lyrics, and yes, they’re wholly different to the English ones. Here are the Japanese lyrics, the English translation of which I’m taking from the Super Mario Wiki’s page on Ashley’s theme song, where you can also find the Japanese originals. Again, I’ve italicized the lyrics from the chorus; the non-italicized lyrics are sung by Ashley.
Number one in the world, everyone loves her
You know who she is, Ashley!
Doesn’t matter who you are, just one look at her and you’ll avert your eyes
Of course, I’m Ashley after all!Loved by everyone around the world
You know who she is, Ashley!
Ashley’s magic is the greatest
We’ll have a party tonight!NAWA BUNA NU — spell of laughter
JIO IRA UN — what spell was that?
IO DI EMU — I can’t remember this one...
Oh god, this is so boring!Number one in the world, everyone loves her
You know who she is, Ashley!
Ashley’s magic is the greatest
I’m not afraid of nothin’!Always looking up at the countless stars in the night sky,
Always all alone.
I want to be friends with everyone.
What should I do?Number one in the world, everyone loves her
You know who she is, Ashley!
Ashley’s magic is the greatest
We’ll have a party tonight!
Let’s focus on the second stanza, which happens to be the same one in the English version that generates the “I have granted the kids to hell” segment. Rather than listing off magic ingredients, Ashley in this version is chanting spells. In order, we have “NAWA BUNA NU” (ナワ ブナ ヌー), “JIO IRA UN” (ジオ イラ ウン) and then “IO DI EMU” (イオ ディ エム). It wouldn’t seem to mean much in Japanese. But what if you read it… backwards?
Well, written phonetically, it would be something like “OO-MAY DO-EE NOO-AH-REE OH-EEJ OO-N ANOOB-A WAN-A.” Say it out loud if you can’t get it, and keep in mind that in Japan, the WarioWare series is Made in Wario (メイド イン ワリオ or Meido in Wario).
Yep: Made in Wario is number one! Ashley is hyping her own video game series.
And this is a fun little easter egg, but what’s truly remarkable about this is that it means backmasking was part of Ashley’s theme from the start, with the people who created the song putting in something that players would only be able to appreciate by unlocking and then fiddling around with the turntable app in the game. The message is anything but Satanic, of course, it is nonetheless odd that the English version of Ashley’s theme — which is more or less unrelated to the Japanese one, aside from fitting the same melody and meter — would end up being accused of hiding a secret sinister message that would very much recall the backmasking hysteria of the Satanic panic.
To be clear, no, I don’t think Nintendo purposefully snuck a Satanic message into WarioWare: Touched!!, but I have to admit it is a peculiar coincidence for things to come full circle in this manner. A more conspiracy-minded person might point to this unlikely confluence of events as proof that major media corporations truly are driving naive Americans into Satan’s clutches. But that would be silly, of course. Nintendo is famously a family-friendly company. Surely, an entity that purports to have the best of intentions for the purity of your mind and soul wouldn’t deceive you.
Right?
Miscellaneous Notes
More than a few people my age, more or less, have compared Ashley to Emily the Strange, a fictional character that began as a graphic appearing on merchandise sold by Santa Cruz Skateboards. I actually grew up not far from Santa Cruz. It was the cool city with the cool movie theater, and there was even a girl in my high school Spanish class that had stuff bearing Emily the Strange’s image on it, though I didn’t know the character’s name at the time. Since then, Emily’s pop culture footprint has only expanded, with a series of graphic novels and then young adult prose books all centering around the adventures of a spooky, dark girl with unsettling eyes. A movie adaptation by J.J. Abrams’ production company was even announced last October. I’m not sure how well-known Emily would be in Japan, but the existence of this Instagram account would seem to indicate that she at least has some fans there.
You might wonder, then, if this is an instance of a video game taking something from pop culture and reinterpreting it, like what I wrote about with Dungeons & Dragons monsters appear in Final Fantasy or most of the Street Fighter II characters being inspired by other sources. It might be. Nintendo hasn’t said either way, but what is especially interesting in this case is that Emily the Strange would already seem to be a “lift” on some level from an existing thing: a character named Rosamond appearing in Marjorie W. Sharmat’s Nate the Great book series. Rosamond appears in the first book, published in 1972. You have to admit that the similarities exist in pose and vibe and verbiage.
Left: Illustration by Marc Simont appearing in 1974’s Nate the Great Goes Undercover. Right: An Emily the Strange graphic from 1998.
Sharmant and Simont noticed too, but the matter was happily resolved in 2009, with them ultimately agreeing with Cosmic Debris, the company that owns Emily the Strange, that both characters could exist alongside each other. But it makes you wonder if either party knows about Ashley, I suppose.
I said earlier that Ashley’s song is the breakout hit of WarioWare: Touched!! and maybe all WarioWare games. The irony is that Twisted!! saw the debut of a second new character, Mike the karaoke robot, and despite being created by Dr. Crygor for the purposes of performing, he got the weaker song. What a bummer. That’s probably why Ashley got to be a trophy assist in Smash Bros. and poor Mike got nothing.
His song isn’t even as catchy as the Mona Pizza jingle in Touched!!
And finally, a debate I am unable to settle on my own: Do the WarioWare games count as a subset of the expanded universe of Super Mario games? Maybe! WarioWare stars Wario, who debuted in Super Mario Land 2 and went on to take over the franchise starting with the sequel, Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3. But while some of Wario’s subsequent appearances clearly take place in the same universe where Mario and Luigi live, the WarioWare games don’t necessarily. In those, Wario appears in his biker costume and lives in the previously unmentioned Diamond City, where he repeatedly wrangles his gang of weirdo friends into his various business ventures. Waluigi, Captain Syrup and other characters associated with Wario in more traditional spinoffs don’t appear and, even stranger, Nintendo video game systems and products (including many games that classic, “plumber outfit” Wario stars in) appear in the minigame series associated with retrogamer 9-Volt. That would seem to imply that the WarioWare version of the character is a different, alternate version of the guy you control in the Wario Land games, but then again, the Donkey Kong Country games also exist in a world where people play Nintendo video games, and that hasn’t stopped Diddy, Funky and more from being playable in Mario Kart.
Speaking of Mario Kart, a very odd thing happens in the Mario Kart Arcade GP series, where Wario is playable — and it’s “plumber outfit” Wario, not the biker version — but his racetrack is Diamond City. It features multiple landmarks from the WarioWare games, including Club Sugar and the Japanese-style castle associated with ninja girls Kat and Ana, but it also features multiple references to E. Gadd, even though he’s the mad scientist from the Luigi’s Mansion games. (The one in the WarioWare games is Dr. Crygor, but there’s actually a third one, Mad Scienstein, who appears in the Wario Land games.) In general, there is an odd tendency for the WarioWare games to create new characters that seem reminiscent of existing ones in more “proper” Wario games. Consider Orbulon the alien and Tatanga from Super Mario Land 1 and 2. Consider Wario Land 4’s Princess Shokora and the similar-looking Mona. Hell, consider the subject of this game and Sarissa, the little witch girl from Wario’s Woods.
Diamond City appearing in the Mario Kart Arcade GP games would seem to indicate that the WarioWare games do, in fact, exist as part of the larger Super Mario universe, but because the game was both developed and published by Namco, not Nintendo, I wonder if Diamond City got tossed in there because an entity other than Nintendo simply misread the source material. I suppose if Jimmy T. or Mona or someone ended up making an appearance in a Mario Kart game, it would seemingly clinch it, but then again so many guest characters from non-Mario franchises have already done that, so I’m honestly not sure, whereas characters like Dixie Kong and Poochey got to be playable in Mario Kart Tour, seemingly indicating that these games still fall under the Super Mario umbrella. And if someone from WarioWare did show up in a Mario Kart game? I’d bet that it would be Ashley, just because she seems like the breakout character.
Oh one more thing: If you want to read about a less popular little girl character from WarioWare, check out my piece on how li’l Lulu is covertly Nintendo’s way of keeping the Balloon Fight franchise afloat.