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Originally Posted by IGN
June 15, 2009 - We commanded, you responded.
A week or so ago, right amidst the hustle and bustle of E3 2009 and all its flashy news, glitzy trailers and mounds of hands-on coverage, we took a bit of a brief break here at IGN to address a critical concern. Nintendo had just debuted New Super Mario Bros. Wii, winning over press conference attendees and show-goers with its fresh, four-person multiplayer take on the traditional Mario side-scrolling design. But the company missed a key detail in its reveal - it missed the opportunity to establish two new major mascots.
See, if you're going to have a four-player Mario game, you're going to need four different characters to play as -and Nintendo obliged, in part. Player 1 would be Mario, naturally. And Player 2 would be Luigi. But Players 3 and 4? Rather than draw upon the wealth of well-known and notable Mushroom Kingdom characters already available thanks to previous games in the series, the Big N decided to drop the ball. We got two generic Toads.
A blue-colored Toad, a yellow-colored Toad. That's all the description they got. That's all the attention Nintendo deemed appropriate. But we, at IGN, know better than to let such an obvious chance pass by unaddressed. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is going to be one of the biggest games of this year on Nintendo's current console, and tons of people are going to be playing multiplayer sessions with a full force of four. And, when that happens, who wants to be playing as a generic, nameless Toad?
Introducing Yvan and Wolley. We put out the Call to Arms last week, asking for your best efforts at naming these new heroes - your best ideas for how to give them unique, individual personalities beyond the horribly boring "Blue Toad" and "Yellow Toad." And you responded in droves - even in the middle of E3, our biggest event of the year, over 300 comments and suggestion-filled posts were checked in using our Comments box at the end of the article.
We promised a follow-up article where we'd pick the best suggested names and establish them as the names for these characters. And so, here we are. We have our winners.
Yvan is Player 3's blue-colored Toad. He's headstrong, ambitious and always willing to lend a helping hand - that's why he's the first to respond to the Mario Bros.' call for help in their latest adventure. He's especially skilled at Yoshi-riding, having mastered the skill as a young Toad when Mario and Luigi were just his boyhood heroes. Now, he adventures alongside them.
Wolley is Player 4's yellow-colored Toad. He's more whimsical and carefree than his brother Yvan, but his jovial nature never distracts him from the task at hand. He'll always be there to come along on an incredible journey - he'll just have a lot more fun than the average hero while he's saving the day. He especially loves donning the Mushroom Kingdom's latest power-up, the Propellor Suit - he takes to the air with ease, spiraling through the sky with a great big grin on his face.
Yvan and Wolley, together, are the Toad Bros. Distinct among the greater Toad race, these two young boys have just reached the age when they can finally lend active support to the Mario Bros. in their adventures. Mario and Luigi have been living in the Mushroom Kingdom for a long while, now, so it's understandable that some of the young generation they inspired with their heroics in the earliest Super Mario Bros. games are now old enough to take up the torch themselves, answering the call to assist the legendary plumbers when the Kingdom falls once more into peril.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii isn't the first time Yvan and Wolley have appeared, however. You've seen them before - you probably just didn't know it was them. They first showed up on Isle Delfino, playing a supporting role in GameCube classic Super Mario Sunshine. Here they are, right in the middle of a small group of their fellow Mushroom Retainers (see below).
See, even then Wolley was kicking back and taking it easy, and Yvan was lightheartedly calling him a push-over. "Yvan" is pronounced just like the boy's name Ivan, by the way. And "Wolley" is just like Wally, another boy's name.
So, what do you think? The names Yvan and Wolley were submitted by IGN user britchesman88, who made some great points in support of their selection. Let's enumerate the reasons why they work.
First, they're based on the key component of the characters - the reason why Nintendo chose them, and not the Toad from Super Mario Bros. 2 or any other Mario universe hero. That key component? Color. Nintendo's done these sorts of four-person multiplayer designs in the past, a critical example being The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. And, in these designs, the Big N always prioritizes visual distinction between player characters by giving them widely different colors of clothing - making them easy to tell apart at a glance.
In Four Swords, Zelda series hero Link is always known by his distinctive green tunic. But when he splits himself into four bodies, they're not all green - instead, we see the arrival of Red Link, Blue Link and Purple Link. It's not surprising that New Super Mario Bros. Wii has a similar set of four primary colors for its playable characters (with yellow subbing in for purple this time). They're just assigned a little differently. Mario already has red covered, and Luigi takes the green spot. That left the Big N with a need for a hero who was primarily blue, and another who was primarily yellow.
It could be argued that Waluigi and Wario would fit those terms, and they would - but only in appearance. Not in character, or motivation. Their greedy personalities, along with the fact that Wario is doing just fine with his own spin-off series, excludes them from serious selection.
So we get a blue-colored Toad and a yellow-colored Toad, Yvan and Wolley. "Yvan" is "Navy" spelled backwards, and "Wolley" is "Yellow" spelled backwards. It's simple, it's effective, and it's fun. It's also the kinds of names Nintendo would pick themselves, had the company not been absentminded and forgot to do so this time around.
Just look at Wario and Waluigi again, if you want support for that point. Wario is just Mario with the M flipped over, and Waluigi is a re-arranged mash-up of Luigi's name, and some Japanese word meaning sneaky (or something like that). Nintendo's character names are always silly, so even if you think reversing the letters of the names of two colors is weird, well - it's something the Big N would do without missing a beat.
And, finally, britchesman88 argued against including "Toad" in their names, which I believe is the right way to go - we are trying to make these guys more distinct and less generic, and names like "Toadbert" or "Toadster," while fun for a minute, just don't have the lasting value of Yvan and Wolley. And these guys need to be distinct, and have their own personalities and stories -because they are unique, separate characters. Zelda's Four Swords just had clones of Link - he used the Four Sword to split his body, but each different-colored guy was still him. This time, that's not the case. Yvan and Wolley are their own heroes.
I'll tell you, I went back to play New Super Mario Bros. Wii on the second and third day of E3 last week, with these names in mind for the characters, and it helped me to better connect with the game. I was excited to get to play as Wolley, instead of being disappointed that I had to be Yellow Toad. There's an important difference there. There's an important aspect of being able to enjoy and identify with your hero that, if you choose to accept too, will help you better enjoy the game yourself when it arrives this holiday season for Wii.
So well done, community! Thanks for all your great ideas and suggestions, and I hope you'll join me in welcoming Yvan and Wolley into the Nintendo fold. If you want to read more about them, keep an eye on their official Stars profiles - here, and here. They'll be continuing to appear here on IGN as we continue to look ahead to the release of New Super Mario Bros. Wii later this year.
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06-12-2009, 09:51 PM
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