Ashley

Ashley is a major character in the WarioWare series, first appearing in WarioWare: Touched! She is a young witch who lives in a haunted mansion in Diamond City along with her close imp friend, Red. She often takes trips outside her mansion to train in magic and is shown to be a serious, irritable person.

WarioWare: Touched!
Ashley's microgames in WarioWare: Touched! (collectively called "Total Drag") consist of tapping and dragging objects. Continuing the WarioWare tradition of having at least one set with a lyrical theme, Ashley's theme song plays throughout the microgame set.

In her stage's opening cutscene, Ashley attempts to cook a potion but fails. As she and Red leave the mansion, Orbulon, whose Oinker had crashed earlier due to a lightning storm, accidentally bumps into her. Ashley gets angry, and Orbulon runs off. Red asks her if she is fine, but she only replies that the alien is the last ingredient needed for the potion. Red volunteers to catch him, but fails and asks Ashley to forgive him; she does, only to decide she is going to use Red as the ingredient instead.

WarioWare: Smooth Moves
Ashley returns in WarioWare: Smooth Moves, where her level is named "The Loquacious Spell Book". Ashley attempts to cast a spell on a potted plant using Red as her magic wand, but she fails: it only causes the sprout to become a daisy. Suddenly, Ashley is addressed by a sentient spell book with a skull on the front that states it can help. Once the level is complete, the player is shown Ashley trying the spell again after receiving help from the book, which causes another potted plant to grow into a gargantuan, monstrous Venus flytrap that bursts through the roof. Red is visibly frightened by the development, but Ashley herself simply smiles.

Ashley's stage introduces the "Big Cheese", "Thumb Wrestler", and "The Discard" forms. The minigame Can Shooter is unlocked after completion of the level.

The Japanese Smooth Moves website feature a blog section for the WarioWare developers. In her blog entry, Ashley states she is not interested in blogging and orders Red to write something in her place. Red then tells of an occurrence where the pair went to practice magic at a riverbed near their mansion, and Ashley paused when she saw a family of monkeys, as it reminded her of her parents in her distant hometown. The blog receives encouraging comments from other WarioWare employees, but Ashley is nevertheless angered.

WarioWare: D.I.Y.
In WarioWare: D.I.Y., the duo stars in a film named Magical Witch Ashley. It shows the pair looking off into the sky. If the player fails, Ashley turns to the screen wearing a mask, scaring Red. If the player passes a microgame, some shooting stars are seen. This is shown to indeed be a film, as a bunch of ghosts with cameras show up when the player gets a Game Over. Ashley is also shown in a mask store that she owns whenever the player beats a boss microgame; her expression depends on the number of masks, which is chosen randomly. If there are only a few masks, Ashley's expression may appear normal or disappointed. If there are a lot, Ashley smiles.

Ashley's records are usually peaceful, romantic, or very cheerful, and are generally described as the kind the player wants to sing to. While this seems uncharacteristic for her, Ashley usually has a snide comment in the record's description (for example, City Nights, a peppy city music-like song, has her comment "Cityscape at night? Big deal."). She is also a fan of Sekaiichi Asaruka's comics, due to their creepy tone. Her microgame set is themed around food.

Ashley, with Jimmy T., 9-Volt, Orbulon, and Mona, apparently left WarioWare, Inc. to work for Diamond Software in this game. Though the reason they switched companies is unknown, various residents of Diamond City consider possibilities in the D.I.Y. Forums feature of the game. One reason is that Diamond Software may actually pay them.

Game & Wario
Game & Wario features Ashley as the host of a self-titled minigame. The minigame's opening cutscene shows Ashley reading a book and coming across a picture page depicting monsters. Ashley casts a spell to be materialized inside the book page, but she is inadvertently transported inside another page themed around candies and sweets instead. Red likes this development, but Ashley is furious and Red transforms into a broom so that they can escape the candy world.

The minigame is a shoot'em up-esque sidescroller where the player controls Ashley by angling the GamePad. The player can collect magic orbs and presents to increase their score while shooting down the cookies and other obstacles. If Ashley is hit too many times, she becomes upset and the player has to comfort her by patting her on the head via the GamePad screen in order to continue.

Ashley makes other appearances within the game. In the Bowling minigame, she is depicted on one of the pins. She is also featured as the subject of the 13th Mona Superscoop capsule. In it, Mona states that she took a photo of Ashley flying on her broom at night and that she was surprised to see her looking happy. Finally, one of the possible random paintings in the Artsy Call Code is a portrait of Ashley (pictured in the gallery).

Ashley is the theme of the third Miiverse Sketch Masterpiece Collection video (commented by Red), a series showcasing pictures of often questionable quality made in the game's Miiverse Sketch mode. Ashley herself is the host of the tenth video, themed after skeleton drawings.

WarioWare Gold
Ashley returns in WarioWare Gold alongside Red and the rest of the series cast. The opening cutscene shows Ashley immediately hanging up on Wario when he calls her to explain his newest money-making scheme.

Ashley's story begins with her summoning a demon named Gahrumble to her mansion. Red congratulates Ashley on her skills and learns that their guest has not eaten in days, as an insatiably hungry demon named Hum Gree is eating all the food in the demon realm. Ashley decides to go to the demon realm to defeat Hum Gree herself. She manages to defeat the demon with a spell that turns Hum Gree into a harmless white fluffy version of himself, and she teleports back to her mansion.

Ashley's stage is part of the Twist League, where all of her microgames use gyro input, similar to WarioWare: Twisted!. Her theme is Fantasy.

Ashley later appears in the Potluck Gang set of the Ultra League, where she goes on a camping trip with Red, Orbulon, 9-Volt, 18-Volt, Dribble, Spitz, Mike, and 5-Volt. 5-Volt organizes a potluck, where she brings a "garlic" (which is actually a poisonous mandrake root), to Red's shock and horror. During the stage, she plays cards with the others. In the stage's ending cutscenes, Dribble says "We better bring Wario next time," to which Ashley responds "... Next time?", causing her to blush. In the ending of the game, Ashley appears with everyone else to persuade Wario into sharing the money from the tournament, snarking "Well, that was easy." when Wario immediately trips over in his escape attempt.

She also stars in the minigame Pumpkin Panic, in which the player controls Ashley from an overhead perspective to defend a field of pumpkins from legions of mandrakes.

WarioWare: Get It Together!
Ashley appears in WarioWare: Get It Together! In the game's story mode, she appears in the opening cutscene, brewing a potion alongside Red. She, along with the rest of the WarioWare, Inc. employees, gets sucked in the game world due to Wario's actions.

Her stage is the Food stage, which is available after Kat & Ana's Nature stage is completed. She is the only character not from WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! to have her own unique stage.

In the pre-stage cutscene, Wario and co. notice a pervasive amount of corruption near Ashley's stage entrance. The gang finds Ashley, who is apparently amused by the effect the game bug has on her stage. Her emotion immediately turns to indifference when she is noticed by the gang. Wario tries to recruit Ashley into the gang but she rebukes him by saying she has no reason to do so. Wario says they do not need her anyway, prompting Ashley to jump into the stage to prove him wrong.

In her stage's cutscene, Ashley & Red are sitting in the dining room hungry because they have nothing to eat. Ashley starts to hallucinate Red's head as a hamburger, apparently considering eating him. Mandrakes then attack the mansion. Red immediately turns into Ashley's wand and she repels their assault by using spells to turn the mandrakes into food. After her stage is cleared, Ashley joins the gang, simply stating, "Whatever."

After beating Anything Goes, Ashley goes back to the real world alongside most of the other WarioWare, Inc. employees and chases after Wario after it is revealed their predicament was caused by his poor programming. However, they soon remember other people were left behind in the game world, and immediately return to rescue them.

As a playable character, Ashley flies around on her broom with. Pressing makes her fire a projectile from her wand in the direction she is facing. The combination of free movement and omnidirectional attacks allows Ashley to complete almost any microgame with ease, and she excels in forcing moving objects to move quickly and efficiently (e.g. Gondola Lift and Sanitation Station, two of 6 games that are considered a good fit). Although Ashley has no microgames deeming her a bad fit, her constant projectiles are inefficient in removing large volumes of objects and can cause desired targets to move away from her, evidenced in Apple Drop and Egg It On, the two microgames that deem her a below-average fit. Because of her versatile characteristics, Ashley has 161 microgames that deem her an above-average fit (the most out of any character).

Waiwai! Wario
Ashley appears in the gag strip Waiwai! Wario, where she is the last WarioWare Inc. employee Mona summons to get Wario to keep his promise. As Wario's fart cloud prevents the two from approaching him, Ashley stabs Wario in the butt using a voodoo doll to wake him up.

Super Smash Bros. series


Ashley's Theme appears in Super Smash Bros. Brawl as one of the tracks available for the WarioWare Inc. stage, and Ashley herself appears as a sticker, enhancing both Princess Peach's and Zelda's magic abilities by 22. The sticker is based on her official art from WarioWare: Touched!

Ashley is also an Assist Trophy in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS / Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, where her design is based on her Game & Wario appearance. When summoned, she conjures a dark cloud of magic on the stage which afflicts opponents with different effects, such as shrinking opponents, slowing them down, rendering them invisible, and causing healing items to inflict damage. It appears to be very similar to that of Luigi's original Final Smash in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Negative Zone. In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, her eyes glow red for the duration of the spell. An Ashley outfit was also added to Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS / Wii U as DLC in February 2016. In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Ashley also makes an appearance as a spirit.

Rhythm Heaven Megamix
Ashley & Red make an appearance in the Challenge Train course "Wario... Where?" in Rhythm Heaven Megamix. The first game of the course is a version of Tap Trial, which features Ashley replacing the girl from the original version. The game consists of making Ashley tap dance with two monkeys by following their instructions.

Additionally, a stuffed doll of Ashley can be seen on the museum curator's desk.

Super Mario Maker
Ashley is one of the unlockable Mystery Suits for Costume Mario in Super Mario Maker. As with the other costumes, Ashley can only be used in the Super Mario Bros. tileset. When the Mystery Mushroom is grabbed, Ashley says, "Hocus Pocus!" Ashley rides on her broom when she is climbing or swimming, and the death and stage completion jingles are replaced with the jingles from the Ashley minigame from Game & Wario.

Nintendo Badge Arcade
Ashley is featured in various panels of Nintendo Badge Arcade. In addition to being present in the WarioWare panels with the rest of the series cast, a single badge of Ashley is present in one of Nikki's panels, the Yokai Watch set and in the Splatoon set, and Ashley has her own Halloween, Christmas, New Year, and Valentine Day's panels, which depict her wearing a variety of themed outfits. A set of Home Menu screen icons featuring Ashley was also released.

A set of badges parodying The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask featuring Ashley and other WarioWare characters was released in Japan on December 22, 2016. One of the badges portrays Ashley dressed as Link (holding the Deku Mask).

Crazy Galaxy
Alongside four brand-new characters, Ashley appeared as a protagonist in the reveal of the fake game Crazy Galaxy, the event for 2017 in Nintendo Badge Arcade. When referring to this version of Ashley, the Arcade Bunny says "she looks like more of an adult", indicating that she is older than in the WarioWare series. In the game's plot description, an accident in "astronaut school" sends Ashley and the other protagonists flying to the other end of the universe, and they must travel through space to return home while encountering and fighting aliens on the way.

Tetris 99
From September 17 to September 21,  ran the 24th Maximus Cup which featured a WarioWare: Get It Together! theme, where Ashley is represented by the "Z" tetromino.

Web comics
Two web comic strips made by Ashley's creator Ko Takeuchi were released on the kids' section of Nintendo's Japanese website to promote her 3DS themes. They are called Ashley no Halloween Night and Barbara & Ashley.

In the first strip, Ashley is shown sleeping on Halloween's night, but she then levitates into the air and transforms to wear a more conventional witch attire. At the same time, her group of friends come to her home and knock at her door, and she heads off along with the group into the night.

In the second strip, Ashley is hired by Barbara to perform at her Live Club. She attempts to sing in front of a cheering audience (made up of Red and various characters from Rhythm Heaven Megamix), but she struggles due to her stage fright. As Barbara smugly thinks Ashley can make her rich, she says she forgot the song's lyrics and falls asleep on stage, to Barbara's dismay.

Other appearances
Ashley cameos as a background sign in Paper Airplane Chase, appearing after the player reaches 150 points in Endless Mode. Her appearance replaces Wario's from the original Paper Plane minigame.

A music video of Ashley's Theme was released as downloadable content for ''Daigasso! Band Brothers P''. The video is a montage of the cutscene clips for Ashley's stages in the WarioWare series. Ashley's Theme was also featured as downloadable content for the Japanese versions of the previous Band Brothers games.

A Nintendo 3DS home menu theme patterned after Ashley was released on October 13, 2015, in Japan, October 22 in Europe, and October 29 in North America. A second theme, titled "Ashley's Magic", was released on February 10, 2015 in Japan, March 3 in North America, and June 3 in Europe. A third theme, titled "Ashley's Recipe", was subsequently released on August 9, 2016, in Japan, September 23 in Europe, and September 30 in North America.

A drawing of Ashley was used to demonstrate the time-lapse feature of Art Academy: Home Studio for its Japanese release.

Physical appearance
Ashley wears a red long-sleeve dress with a little orange stripe on the end, an orange neckerchief clipped on her chest with a golden skull brooch, black tights (except in WarioWare Gold), and red shoes. Ashley usually ties her black hair in two large pigtails with a bang swept to the left, and wears an orange tiara. She was drawn with red eyes up until Game & Wario, which had her with solid black eyes instead, a change also made to the other WarioWare characters. Most media published after Game & Wario would switch to depicting Ashley having solid red eyes with no irises. In WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Ashley also appears wearing a white nightgown with a red necktie and her hair down when she is going to sleep. In the title screen for her game in Game & Wario, she appears older and is rendered in a more realistic style. In WarioWare Gold, she wears flat Mary Jane shoes, her bangs are swept in multiple directions, and she retains her red eye color.

Ashley is stated to be 15 years old on the English WarioWare: Touched! website. However, despite claims to the contrary, she has not been given a precise age in any Japanese WarioWare media beyond a statement that her Crazy Galaxy incarnation "might have become" an adult.

Personality
Ashley is a serious, easily angered person. Ashley also seems to have a large ego (as stated in her theme song), and is prone to bouts of laziness; on one of the WarioWare: Smooth Moves secret boards, Red is said to take care of his and Ashley's laundry, and she orders Red to write her blog entry for her on the Japanese Smooth Moves website, although it may be out of shyness. Ashley is portrayed as shy and distant; both Touched! and Game & Wario show her not dancing with the other WarioWare employees at the end-of-game party and her response to comments made by her coworkers on her blog entry is simply "Everyone... I hate you." Her resentment may be the result of her shyness and loneliness, however, her theme song, her Game & Wario character card, and her trophy description all state she wants to have more friends. WarioWare Gold depicts Ashley opening up as she is shown playing cards with everyone else during the Potluck Gang stage, and her embarrassed blush in the stage's concluding cutscene hints she enjoyed her time with the others, and her "character trailer" published after the game's launch likewise shows Ashley visibly moved when other WarioWare employees invite her to trick and treat with them.

Ashley is stated to have an affinity for food: her microgame theme in WarioWare: D.I.Y. and WarioWare: Get It Together! is food and her Rank B character cards in Gold states her to be a voracious eater, with another card stating she particularly enjoys the scent of fried mandrakes. However, her story in Game & Wario as well as her Rank C character card in Gold and her description on the official Japanese website indicates she dislikes sweet and sugary food.

Powers and abilities
As seen in the WarioWare games, Ashley can use various spells (stated to be "the darkest spells" in her theme song) and potions. When she is using magic or when she is angered, her hair turns gray-white, and her eyes glow red. In addition to casting spells with a wand, she can shoot magic blasts from her hand as seen in Game & Wario. Despite her theme song's boasting, Ashley is apparently a mediocre magician; her Game & Wario character card states she only successfully cast spells "40% of the time".

WarioWare: Touched! instruction manual
"What's up? People call me Red. Well, at least my friend Ashley does. She's a pretty wicked sorcerer. We live in this big creepy mansion. While Ashley's brewing up potions and studying spells, I spend most of my time hanging out, collecting ingredients for Ashley, and poking stuff with my pitchfork." "In Ashley's microgames, you've usually got to grab something and slide it somewhere. You'd better do it fast, or Ashley will freak out on you! I'm not even kidding."

WarioWare: Touched! website bio
''Fifteen going on 500, this wisecracking teenage witch stirs up potions and bewitching microgames in equal measure. Play well or you might find yourself to be the mystery ingredient in her next potion.''

Game & Wario character card
-Witch in training -Considers Red her best friend -Spells only work 40% of the time -Wishes she had more friends

WarioWare Gold character cards

 * Rank C – In training to be a witch, Ashley has no time for silliness. Take your talk of cute stuff and candy elsewhere.
 * Rank B – Ashley has very specific tastes in food and, when eating, saves her favorite thing for last. Voracious.
 * Rank A – When Ashley is trying out some new magic, she uses a special wand called Ashley's Witch Stick.

WarioWare Gold Japanese website
''Apprentice girl magician. Silent and uncooperative. Hates cute dresses and sweets.''

European website bio

 * "The wicked witch Ashley zips around on her broomstick firing off spells. Those microgames don't stand a chance."

Character description

 * Intro description: "Dislikes: Cute stuff, expressing emotions, and unnecessary chitchat. Likes: Casting spells, food, her pal Red."
 * Break Room description: "Dislikes: Cute stuff, expressing emotions, and unnecessary chitchat. Likes: Casting spells, eating, and hanging out with her sidekick, Red."

Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS / Wii U trophy
Blue indicates exclusive to the Wii U version.

Tips
"A dark field will appear around Ashley. Any foes inside the field will move more slowly and take continuous damage."

"Unless you summoned Ashley, eating food while within her dark field will cause damage instead of healing it. It's Pit's worst nightmare!"

Merchandise
A small phone charm of Ashley was part of an assortment of blind-bagged  figures featuring some of the characters of WarioWare: Touched!. Released in mid-May 2005, the figure also comes with a plate with her in-game logo written on it.
 * Takara Tomy gashapon figure (2005)

Unusually, the figure depicts Ashley wearing an orange bow on the back of her head.

A set of two 13x13cm cleaning cloths bearing Ashley's likeness was added on the Japanese Club Nintendo customer reward program on October 30, 2014, redeemable for 180 points. The cloths used edited variant of her Game & Wario artwork and were available until the service's closure in 2016.
 * Club Nintendo cleaning cloth set (2014)

Quotes

 * "I'm Ashley, and I hope you find my microgames a Total Drag. Good luck trying not to embarrass yourself! (There's no way you'll ever, ever, EVER score over 30 points! Ever.)''
 * "Just drag stuff. Even you can do that."
 * (after seeing a picture book page depicting monsters) That's so cool!
 * "I'm... Ashley. You're wondering… what I'm up to? Just open your eyes... It'll all become clear."

Trivia

 * Ashley appears to be ambidextrous. In WarioWare: Smooth Moves, she wields her wand in her right hand, while in WarioWare Gold, she uses her left. In Game & Wario, her cutscene shows her wielding her wand in her right hand, while in-game she casts spells with her left.