Finally answering the age-old question: What if Wario Land... but pizza?
With the Wario Land series of platforming games being some of the most distinct, yet commercially underwhelming among Nintendo's lineup, it was inevitable that it would eventually fall into dormancy... But not out of favor with fans.
As proven by indie success stories like Pizza Tower, there is clearly demand for games adopting Wario Land's style in gameplay and presentation. To discern why and how we got here, in this article, we'll take a look at both the history of Wario Land and Pizza Tower.
Preparing The Dough
After years of Nintendo R&D1 being tasked with creating Game Boy Mario games instead of titles in their own franchises, the foreseeable popularity of new antagonist Wario from their most recent game – Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins (1992) – presented an opportunity to break free from the creative contraints of the Mario franchise (traditionally the domain of Nintendo EAD), which was first capitalized on with the release of Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (1994).
Aside from providing more creative settings, Wario's Game Boy and Virtual Boy (1995) adventures emphasized his brute strength and greed. Wario Land II (1998) and 3 (2000) then made Wario invincible, shifting the challenge towards transformation-based puzzle-solving and exploration. Wario Land 4 (2001) merged the previous gameplay styles while standing out for its uniquely absurd art and sound design, while adding many of its own ideas.
After a strong run on handheld consoles, the series slowed with Wario Land: Shake It! (2008) on Wii, a beautifully animated, yet modestly-selling entry. Meanwhile, Nintendo pivoted Wario's identity towards the WarioWare series, which proved conceptually more flexible and commercially more viable. As a result, the Wario Land series faded, with no new mainline titles releasing in decades.
Shaping the Base
In comes Pizza Tower, the debut project of indie studio Tour De Pizza, led by pseudonymous designer and artist McPig. Previously having drawn comics about his own character "Peppino", a nervous pizza chef battling pizza monsters, he now wanted to turn his world into a video game. Initially imagined as a dark survival horror RPG, the concept evolved when technical limits in RPG Maker and McPig's growing interest in platformers pushed him toward GameMaker.
By 2018, he had begun developing Pizza Tower as a spiritual successor to the dormant Wario Land series, with Peppino reimagined as the frantic protagonist of a comedic, cartoonish action game. In 2020, programmer Sertif joined to help refine the design, and together they shifted Pizza Tower from a puzzle-heavy, maze-like platformer into a faster, score-driven game inspired especially by Wario Land 4, visually drawing from media like SpongeBob or European comics.
Promotion began in 2018 with Tumblr posts, demos, and Patreon builds, later gaining momentum through livestreams and community feedback on Discord. After five years of development, Pizza Tower officially released for Windows via Steam in January 2023, self-published by Tour De Pizza, with a Nintendo Switch edition following suit a year later.
Served With Sauce
In the game, Peppino Spaghetti, an anxious Italian pizza chef, is threatened by the villainous sentient floating pizza Pizzaface, who plans to destroy his failing pizzeria with a nuclear laser. To stop him, Peppino storms the massive Pizza Tower, which contains the game's levels. Much like in Wario Land 4, many levels have their own absurd gimmicks, combined with even weirder pizza-adject level themes.
Gameplay emphasizes Peppino's exaggerated movement and combat abilities. Like Wario, he can dash, slam and throw enemies, with the new addition of a combo system that rewards speed and aggression. Longer combos yield higher scores, to differing results after ending the level, evolving the coin-colleciting mechanics of Wario Land. Like in Wario Land II and 3, there is no health meter, since losing your combo by being hit by an enemy is already punishing enough.
Additionally, levels are filled with creative power-ups and transformations, alongside hidden secrets and collectibles. Finding these can be really challenging, especially considering how Pizza Tower asks players to race back through any given stage with a tight deadline after reaching its end in a similar manner to 4 and Shake It!.
Doing The Dishes
Pizza Tower's mixture of nostalgic appeal, new ideas and unapologetic chaos made it one of the most successful spiritual successors of all time, even surpassing Wario Land according to some critics – with the game even residing among the highest-rated Steam games of all time – and definitely surpassing its most recent games commercially.
The game has received numerous updates since release, adding new secret levels, playable characters and modes among other things. For the moment, the team's focus seems to be adding onto their vision of the original release, with there being no public announcement of any potential future Tour de Pizza games.
The release has certainly proven that market interest for new Wario Land-style games exist, but Nintendo has so far not signalled any intentions to continue the series. Rereleases of the existing entries have been conducted via their Nintendo Classics service and games like WarioWare: Move It! (2023) included references – like a boss character from Wario Land 4 reappearing – but currently, it seems like it will be up to fans to carry the torch.