Wario (franchise)

The Wario franchise is a spin-off of the Mario franchise that features Wario as the main character. It is the first franchise created by Nintendo to feature a villain/antihero as the main protagonist. Since its inception, the series has been primarily handled by Nintendo R&D 1 and its successor, Nintendo SPD Group No. 1.

The Wario franchise branches into two main series, the Wario Land series and the WarioWare series. Wario Land games are platformers that involve the greedy and selfish protagonist looking for treasure and other ways of accumulating wealth. The WarioWare games focus on action. They are groups of short minigames (called microgames) which are made by Wario and his friends, motivated by his wish of making money; they work in the fictional WarioWare, Inc., a video game producing company. These microgames often make use of the new technologies of the system they are released for.