The Devil in the Mushroom Kingdom
Because the Super Mario games make only sparing references to religion, the idea that one of them would make a shout out to the Devil should seem downright absurd. After all, this is a game series that had a reputation for putting smiley faces on trees, clouds and anything else in the background. By design, it’s cheerful and family-friendly in a way that suggests Satan just doesn’t have a place in the Mushroom Kingdom. And he shouldn’t have had one, per the terms of a ban Nintendo of America had in place at the time on depictions of all religious figures and icons.
Despite all that, the Devil did get his claws into one Super Mario game, in a way. After I posted about the weird Tower of Babel reference in Super Mario Bros. 3, someone emailed me to point out the NES version of Wario’s Woods features a one-off character named Fauster.
Wario’s Woods exists at an interesting point in the history of Mario because this puzzle game — or series, I suppose, if two games can be called a series — served as a sandbox where Nintendo could stick all the Mario characters they didn’t know what to do with: Birdo post-Super Mario Bros. 2, Toad post-Super Mario Bros. 3 and Wario before the company figured him out. And while I will discuss them later in this piece, it’s Fauster who seems to be the one point of intersection between the Super Mario games and Satan.
In the English localization, this character takes his name from the legend of Dr. Faust, which tells of a man who sells his soul to the devil for worldly gains. In Japanese, it’s even clearer what sort of character he’s supposed to be, as he’s Akuman (アクマン), clearly from akuma (悪魔), meaning “devil” — and yes, like the Street Fighter character but only in international localizations because his name is different in Japan. To clarify, however, this Wario’s Woods character is a guy with a pitchfork and bat wings and an overall devilish look to him, even if he’s not necessarily *the* Devil so much as *a* devil, which is a distinction that seems to work about the same in Japanese as it does in English.
Wario’s Woods was released in 1994, when Nintendo’s ban on basically any religious imagery was still in place. Per the Legends of Localizations post on the matter, around this time Nintendo of America had in place Game Content Guidelines that forbade any NES, Super NES or Game Boy games from including sex, profane language, “random, gratuitous and/or excessive language,” obscenity in any form, “subliminal political messages or overt political statements,” and finally the following:
ethnic, racial, religious, nationalistic, or sexual stereotypes of language [including] symbols that are related to any racial, religious, nationalistic, or ethnic group, such as crosses, pentagrams, God, gods (Roman mythological gods are acceptable), Satan, hell [or] Buddha.
It goes without saying that Nintendo of Japan did allow many of these things, hence the long list of early Nintendo-system titles that had to be scrubbed, sometimes of bafflingly innocuous things. The Final Fantasy magic spell Holy, for example, got called a lot of things in the titles that were localized for English-speaking territories, including Harm in FF1, White in FFIV and Pearl in FFVI — with FFVII, released for the Sony Playstation, being the first game to have its English version call it what it had always been known as in Japan. Even considering the Satanic panic roiling parents in the U.S.back in the day, that’s a lot of work to over up the idea that a spell associated with sacred light could cause damage to the evil and undead.
Nintendo’s own Satan-themed Pac-Man clone, 1984’s Devil World, never made it to the NES. Notably, it’s the one Shigeru Miyamoto NES game not to get a North American release. Given that its big bad is a dancin’ Devil rocking a speedo and go-go boots, I can see why this game would not comply with Nintend of America’s ban, though I also imagine that it would have been fairly easy to swap out the Devil character — and also the crosses and bibles that serve as this game’s equivalent of the Power Pellets. (The game was finally localized for Nintendo Switch Online in 2023, with religious paraphernalia intact)
Git down, disco devil!
As extensive as the ban on religious imagery was, it’s always interesting to see what either slipped through or was given an exemption. Most famously, the first two Legend of Zelda games have Link carrying a shield with a cross design. It’s plain to see in both official artwork and the in-game sprite, to the point where you have to wonder what the internal justification was for keeping it as is, especially because both games were censored to eliminate other religious references.
From A Link to the Past onward, Link would no longer carry that shield.
The Magic Book item in the first game, for example, also bore a cross design that remained in the international version of the game, but the name was changed; In Japanese, it’s バイブル (Baiburu) — literally, it’s supposed to be the Bible. And in Zelda II, there exists a creature who blocks the pathway to Eastern Hyrule. In English, it’s called the River Devil, despite looking like a pig-octopus hybrid. In Japan, it’s マモノ (Mamono) — “evil spirit,” “monster,” “apparition” or “demon.” But what’s especially interesting is that the map icon for this creature in the original version of the game is a red horned thing — presumably meant to suggest an oni, but looking enough like the western depiction of the Devil that the sprite was changed to something that clearly did not.
Zelda II also has a cross item that is, well, just a cross, seemingly powered by Jesus. Go figure.
So how do we explain Fauster’s presence in Wario’s Woods, given Nintendo’s phobia of all things religious? Well, clearly Nintendo’s ban on religious imagery was either inconsistent or nuanced in a way the text doesn’t indicate. But let’s pretend for a moment that Fauster got an official pass by censors. I suppose we could argue that the character’s English name technically references the human character in the Faust story, not the Devil, even if the word faustian describes a thing done without proper consideration for the long-term consequences — a metaphorical deal with the Devil referencing the literal one in the original. And I guess if you want to nitpick the switch from Akuman to Fauster, the localized name could be seen as more of a literary reference than a religious one specifically.
Also? Pointing to Fauster not being *the* Devil is the fact that he’s the first boss in the NES version of Wario’s Woods, which is on the lower end of the evil hierarchy from what you’d expect of the dark lord. Wario’s Woods is an unusual puzzle game in that rather than operating pieces directly, like you’d do in Tetris or Dr. Mario, you instead control Toad, who moves more or less like he does in Super Mario Bros. 2. He hops around the screen, amid the junk falling from up high, and he manually lifts “blocks” in order to line up like colors in a row, to make them disappear. Occasionally, boss characters show up in the same area as Toad is, and he has to strategically place bombs to take them out.
Here’s the fight against Fauster.
Wario’s Woods is the first game to feature Toad as a main character, and it was released four years after Super Mario World, which was the first Mario game to leave li’l mushroomhead out altogether. And although he has no specific reason to have animus with Wario, Nintendo didn’t initially know how to use this recent addition to the series. After debuting in Super Mario Land 2 in 1992, the anti-Mario showed up as the big bad of a different puzzle game, Mario & Wario, in 1993. It took place in a different forest, with a different pint-sized hero, Wanda, scrambling around to foil him. The NES installment of Wario’s Woods debuted about the same time as Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, and because the latter was a much bigger success, Wario moved toward the side-scrolling Metroidvania-type games that would be his claim to fame until Nintendo reinvented him as the mini-game fart monster of the WarioWare series. The fact that Birdo also shows up in Wario Woods really makes it seem like Nintendo was rummaging through the bargain bin of Super Mario B-listers at the time and randomly decided to toss her in as well.
What’s especially odd about either Wario’s Woods game, however, is that they seem to draw on an RPG-like stable of fantasy characters. As a result, having an explicitly devilish character makes a lot more sense, as minor fiends tend to show up in these games a lot. In fact, the original Final Fantasy has a similar-looking enemy — dubbed Imp in the first English translation, Goblin in the original Japanese in all subsequent localizations — as the first one you face in battle.
The rest of the bosses in this version of Wario’s Woods are all out of old school fantasy RPG central casting. Aside from Fauster, you’ev got Boom, a pig-looking ogre wearing vaguely medieval garb; Mad, a mean mermaid; Goro, a somewhat simian-looking golem; Seizer, a skeletal wizard in a robe; and Drago, a dragon. And then there’s Wario, of course.
Taken together, the cast lends the game a fairly un-Super Mario vibe, to the point that I wondered if it was developed out of house, the way Mario & Wario was developed by Gamefreak. That doesn’t seem to be the case, however, as Wario’s Woods was developed by Nintendo R&D1, the team responsible for some iconically Nintendo titles as well as ones that led up to the Super Mario series specifically, including Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. and Mario Bros. And longtime Nintendo staffer Kenji Miki serves as director on Wario’s Woods and on a handful of other titles, including Ice Climber and NES Open Tournament Golf, before shifting to producer through the early 2000s on everything from Goldeneye 007 to Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Which is to say that no other projects would seem to explain the medieval RPG vibes seen in this game.
But the NES Wario’s Woods did not stand alone. Released December 10, 1994 — so late in the lifespan of the system that it was actually the final first-party release in North America — the title was paired that same day with a Super Nintendo counterpart. And although it had a similar gameplay premise, it wasn’t a port and actually offered a whole different crew of vaguely RPG-seeming weirdos.
In order, you have Katsini, who dresses like a stage magician even if he looks to be the same species as Tatanga from Super Mario Land; Galrog, a cyclops; Harley Q, a harlequin; Sam Spook, a dude who looks a lot like Wario but with a green pumpkin for a head; Sven, a viking dude; Parrotor, a weird parrot-lizard hybrid; Mssr. Boo, a ghost wearing a beret; Aqualea, a mean mermaid who’s different from the mean mermaid in the NES version of Wario’s Woods; Razor, a water creature who looks a great deal like an old-school Zora from Legend of Zelda; Tad Rock, an anthropomorphic frog that looks like he’s hitting up a gay club; Thak, a big blue orge; Lizardon, a big purple dinosaur that despite that description does not look like Barney; Manglylox, an orange, furry thing that kind of looks like Gossamer from Looney Tunes; Dedar, a green sprite creature that the Super Mario Wiki assigns female pronouns to, although I’m not sure if the game does that; Carlton, a knight; and finally Harry Hare, a rabbit wearing a suit who is probably a nod to Alice in Wonderland, even if he’s dressed more like the White Rabbit than he is the March Hare. Oh, and also Wario.
Overall, they’re more or less fantasy even if they’re a little goofier than the stock RPG characters that made up the NES crew. In fact, the Super NES crew seems like Wario was workshopping the kind of eclectic goon squad he’d eventually get in the WarioWare games. But that’s maybe why it makes more sense that it’s only the more RPG-leaning NES version that has Fauster, who unless I’m mistaken, is as close as the Super Mario series ever gets to an explicitly devilish character.
Of course, Nintendo of America eventually relented on some (but not all) references to real-world religion. As this Paste magazine essay notes, the gnostic philosophy underpinning the Xenoblade series shows just how far the company could shift in the other direction. But while this little dude with a pitchfork hardly seems remarkable in the context of all the video games that have come out since, I think it is remarkable for its era — both as a reminder of how extension NIntendo’s self-censorship was back in the day and how futile something like this can be. Because all video games draw from the culture that produces them, religion is going to get into them in one way or another.
Miscellaneous Notes
Both the Super Mario Wiki and the Nintendo Wiki list Intelligent Systems as a co-developer on both versions of Wario’s Woods. Because Intelligent Systems is most famous for developing the Fire Emblem series, that could be explanation enough for the distinctly RPG-ish vibe of the original boss characters. It also maybe follows that the same developer would also create Panel de Pon, which similarly puts a fantasy aesthetic in a puzzle game. And at least some of the graphics were designed by Ryota Kawade, who went on to direct the first three Paper Mario RPGs. But then again, Intelligent Systems does plenty of games that are wholly devoid of any fantasy elements, so perhaps it’s just a quirk of Wario’s Woods.
Weirdly, the Super NES version of Wario’s Woods marked the game’s physical debut in any territory. The game did not make it to Japan until April 23, 1995 — and only in the form of a Satellaview release. This might explain why I can’t find any documentation for what the characters’ Japanese names are. They may not have any that were ever printed in Japanese, for all I know. But at the very least that doesn’t seem to have prevented Aqualea (mermaid no. 2) from becoming the subject of art drawn by Japanese gamers.
Nintendo’s policy on depicting religious icons and characters makes a curious allowance: “Roman mythological gods are acceptable.” Presumably this must explain the existence of Palutena, the goddess of light in Kid Icarus… even if the game is trying for an ancient Greek setting. I wonder if the exception would also cover Norse gods? Japanese gods?
Proof that Nintendo was figuring out what to do with Wario? Well, 1994 also saw the release of Wario Blast: Featuring Bomberman, a Hudson Soft-developed title that is really just a Bomberman game with Wario in it, despite how the title is phrased. I do wonder if this is what gave Wario his longstanding association with bombs, however.
There’s another instance of religion-related censorship and Wario — and Luigi too. In the original, Japanese version of Mario Party, the sound clip you’d hear when either Wario or Luigi lose was a very uncharacteristic (and un-Nintendo) exclamation of “Oh my god!” It’s really weird to hear, and I’m kind of surprised that even the Japanese version of the game allowed this. In the localized version, Wario’s reaction to failure is the more inscrutable “Oh, I missed,” while Luigi simply offers a dejected “Oh.”
Weirdly the day I was finishing up this piece, GTV Japan posted a video about Wario’s Woods! It’s specifically about the manga adaptation of the game, however, but well worth a watch.
Never having read these comics, I was surprised at how… flagrantly offbrand they’re allowed to get. What’s really interesting about this storyline, as it pertains to this post, is that Fauster is positioned to be an all-powerful evil, as if he really were meant to be *the* Devil.
Notably, the manga take on Wario’s Woods makes Wanda a character, and I think there has been a general misunderstanding that Wanda is the flying sprite helping Toad in either version of the game. She’s not, even if the Super NES one looks awfully similar. This character is just a sprite — which Wanda also is, but apparently a different sprite than the one who tussled with Wario previously. In Japanese, its name is ようせい (Yōsei), which is generally localized as “fairy.” In fact, the Sprixies from Super Mario 3D World are also called this in the Japanese version of that game.
There is actually one more character connected to Wario’s Woods who is perhaps the most obscure yet: Abata. For years, I’d see screenshots of the Super NES version of the game that showed off a purple-haired woman appearing in the window that normally shows either Birdo or Wario. Over time, I learned she apparently had a name: あばた or Abata and that she appeared only in the Satellaview version of the game.
It was actually Supper Mario Broth that finally solved this mystery for me. This woman is actually just the Wario’s Woods version of the female avatar character that appeared in many Satellaview games. And it’s probably not that her name is Abata so much that that’s the rendering of the English avatar in Japanese. Case closed.
