Why we always put up with Waluigi

"Let's get started," Mario (Charles Martinet) said to Waluigi (Charles Martinet) regarding his tedious return to a grand, board game-like map in the third console edition of Nintendo's Mario Party. "Oh, yes!" The outcome of their race to extinguish a fire in the minigame Hyper Hydrants will remain unseen, as your babysitter tripped over the cable of your Nintendo 64 controller, yanking the entire device out of the power socket.

For nearly a quarter of a century, Waluigi has held nothing back. Since his days in Mario Tennis, Waluigi has become synonymous with a kind of silent film-esque evil flair, where he would do anything, truly anything, to win the Moonlight Cup. In his very first game with Nintendo, Waluigi presented a style that could be described as a fusion of Wario and Luigi. He discovered that his quirky gameplay in minigames was so bizarre that it garnered laughter even when other characters excelled in Lift Leapers. As the character Waluigi, later popularized through memes, he would forever be known for his knee- and elbow-shaped antics. And as he basked in the laughter of players, Waluigi thought to himself, "Wah hah hah waah!"

Nintendo never quite knew what to do with Waluigi. He appeared in not-so-bad games like Mario Party 2, as well as not-so-great games like Mario Party DS. Most of these games simply became cartridges stored in plastic boxes, only to be seen every few years when moving houses. Yet, Waluigi's most loyal fans, many of whom spent hours playing Mario Party on the Nintendo GameCube while under the influence, are deeply grateful for the series. And I must admit, it is one of the few series that fully embraces Waluigi's furious demeanor and his cap adorned with an inverted "L".

Nevertheless, I still hold a critical stance towards a character who, honestly speaking, isn't a main character in the Mario series. With Wario, I can say "okay." He was in Mario Land 2 and is also in Smash, which is kind of a big deal. But I feel that Waluigi simply doesn't measure up. My rationale essentially boils down to finding him annoying, though I won't delve deeper into that. Is it even necessary to do so? Despite making millions laugh. And do you remember when Waluigi used to be Wario's brother, but now, according to canon, they're just friends? What happened there? Even though it's a humorous fact, I still believe that Waluigi doesn't truly have a rightful place in the Mario world.

Certainly, one could argue that if Waluigi weren't a valuable character, he wouldn't have spawned the Rabbid version of himself, Bwaluigi. However, I still maintain that Waluigi is too annoying to infiltrate major triple-A Mario games outside of Easter eggs, which I must admit can be enjoyable to unlock. I simply don't like Waluigi. There's no real reason for it, but this article will be lengthy. And I feel that he should read it and know. It makes perfect sense to me, as an ordinary person, to write about it publicly. He once said about his critics, "Ha ha ha! Next time. I could have won!"

Perhaps I belong to the people against whom he could have won. But then again, maybe not. He is a villain, yet also a loser, and no one is afraid of him, except perhaps his skeleton, which must be strange. People play him ironically, and even if they claim otherwise, I will still harbor peculiar feelings because Waluigi became a character at the very moment when all the magic disappeared from my youth. The fact that others like him or grew up with him is foreign to me and leaves me feeling lonely, as if I were standing in the snow, observing a happy family having dinner from the outside.

Every time Waluigi says something that essentially echoes Wario's style, I feel an urge to scream at the screen: Why are you like this? What convinced everyone that it was a good idea? And I know that the name "Waluigi" is actually a playful wordplay in Japanese, but I still dislike his presence, and it almost angers me when I scroll past him in a menu in Mario Kart. I believe his skeleton would give me nightmares.

Waluigi, both the tennis player and participant in board games in Mario Party, only occasionally embodies Nintendo's traditional family values. He is a parody of old-fashioned villains who would tie people to railroad tracks, which, in reality, is actually extremely dangerous. However, despite his flaws, he is also a good friend of Mario and Luigi. While Mario Party may have the fans' approval, Waluigi will always do anything, truly anything, to win a tennis match. In the end: Wah hah hah waah!