I ♥ Lizardon
written February 2007Puzzle games are a genre that I'm not the biggest fan of. I don't mind the occasional blast of Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine or Tetris, but they're simply not games I play often.
With the exception of Wario's Woods, that is.
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I first encountered it in Animal Crossing, a game I once loved but then came to realise that it just isn't for me, and the only redeeming value, the NES games, were hideously awkward to get and badly emulated on the European version. It's not terribly fun playing Super Mario Bros. when it can't even play the distinctive theme at the correct tempo, let alone actual gameplay.
Wario's Woods quickly became my most played game out of the selection, with Balloon Fight as a runner-up; I admit that when I first played it, it didn't find it all that magnificent, but it grew on me, and it gradually became the only reason I held onto Animal Crossing. And then I discovered the superior SNES version and therefore had absolutely no reason to keep the game.
I've made a few attempts to express my love for the game, but none of them gone successfully (until the creation of this shrine!). As much as I love the game, it's just not the most wonderful source material of all, especially considering one of my ideas was just talking smack about every frickin' character in the game. There are some interesting ones, but a lot of them are just dull and impossible to write about without just taking a text-based crap into Notepad and somehow giving it context.
Lizardon is an exception.
Maybe I have an automatic fascination with characters who aim to steal the spotlight from the title character, or simply like fat dinosaurs with mohawks, but I just feel that Lizardon is awesome.
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"The next game will feature me!" Lizardon proclaims upon meeting Toad, "I will send you away in shame after crushing your dream of fame." If Toad loses to Lizardon (and rightfully so because Lizardon is BADASS), his words of mocking are poetic and should provoke confidence from within everyone.
"Battles are never pretty, and your dreams of fame are now crushed. As I told you before, I will win."
And win he should. All the other opponents fight merely because they were ordered to, or want a fight, or even to assist Toad in improving his skills; but Lizardon? He fights for star power. He fights for glamour. He fights for his right to party.
Lizardon is a dinosaur many people could learn from. If you desire something, you can't just sit around and hope for it to come to you. You've got to work for it.
Like that time I wished I could be a walrus for a day. I could've just wrote about it wistfully on my blog and hope for some person to come along and make me into a walrus for a day (which never happens because the internet is for assholes), but I didn't. I thought about it extensively for an hour before deciding that being a duck would be better. Free bread!
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So unlike Sam Spook who just sits in a forest and wants to see the mad bomb stacking skills of Toad, Lizardon is fighting for what he wants, and tries his hardest to claim a slice of that fame pie. And therefore, you should feel glad that he won. While Sam just insults Toad and challenges him again, Lizardon reaches his life-long dream of starring in a video game and achieves international fame.
Which would happen if the game actually let you lose.
Toad is obviously a total jerk who has some powerful friends who somehow bribe all the opponents he faces to never let him lose, in which case he can progress to the next enemy with minimal difficulty. This, in turn, means Lizardon is fighting for a lost cause.
The tubby reptile, like a handicapped child who wishes to walk but ultimately cannot, is fighting for stardom he cannot achieve because our "protagonist" has everything set up in his own favour. He can't even give a sorrowful speech upon realising this because Toad is an even bigger asshole and completely ignores his opponents after "defeating" them.
But I will not. I won't stand for such abuse.
Never forget.
