Nintendo rejected a ‘Wario-Peach’ character to avoid being an anime rip-off
An old interview about Waluigi’s creation has been thrust into spotlight for revealing scrapped plans for a Princess Peach doppelgänger.
Have you ever wondered why Waluigi, Luigi’s twisted doppelganger from the Super Mario games, even exists in the first place? Well, long-time Mario fans will tell you that it was just so Wario could have a tennis partner.
Debuting in 2000’s Mario Tennis for the Nintendo 64, Waluigi was the creation of developer Camelot and went on to become a mainstay of the various Super Mario sports and party game spin-offs.
However, thanks to a resurfaced interview about the character’s inception, fans have learnt that Camelot tried making a Wario alternative for Princess Peach as well, only for Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto to reject the concept.
Apparently, she would’ve been called Walupeach, although Wapeach would arguably make more sense as Wario and Waluigi’s names come from ‘warui’ – the Japanese word for ‘bad’ (so their names are literally ‘bad Mario’ and ‘bad Luigi’).
Shugo Takahashi, vice president of Camelot, said that since the creation of Waluigi was approved fairly easily (even his original design was only marginally tweaked), he and his team wished to create another new character that Nintendo would like.
Unfortunately for them, Miyamoto shut down the idea of a Walupeach before they could even show him what she looked like. This is because he assumed she would look too much like a character called Doronjo, the leader of a band of villains from 70s anime series Yatterman.
Takahashi insisted this was never the case and that Walupeach would have had more of a ‘fallen angel’ design, completely different from Doronjo. He didn’t mention, though, if she also would’ve sported Wario-like facial features. If so, maybe Miyamoto had the right idea.
This all comes from a 2008 interview that was only recently republished by Nintendo Dream Web and gained notoriety after being shared by Twitter user gosokkyu.
While it would be nice to see any original drawings of Walupeach, just for the sake of posterity, it’s very unlikely anything related to it will see the light of day.
That said, Nintendo did wind up dabbling with the idea of an evil Peach in at least one game. In 2004’s Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Peach herself is possessed by an evil demon and serves as a major antagonist.
