Keeping Entertained in a Low-Tech Environment, Part IV: Paper Wario

(This entry dictated by Oscar)

The history of Paper Wario started when I was at a restaurant on Christmas Eve and was tired of waiting to eat. I took a napkin and started drawing a maze on it. But the maze had a bunch of rules, like there were places where you could get teleported to another place, and the end was blocked by a frowny face.  What you had to do was get a bucket in the maze to carry a smiley face over to the frowny face and destroy it.

[Interjection by Julie: Here are Brady, Oscar, and Calvin puzzling over one of Oscar's mazes on Christmas Night.]

The second one I made at home. It was the same kind of thing except there were new things like magnetic fields that would pull you into them and buttons that you had to push and little sticks called “secrets” that meant there was a wall that you could walk through.

The third one was exactly like it.

Then I decided to make it so that you had to do more than just that and you had to do timing.  So I would do stuff like count to a certain number and then you had to tap repeatedly at a fast rate on a book.  That was when the mazes started getting more like video games (but like really old ones). 

Then I played it myself and decided it wasn’t much fun, so I made new actions instead of just tapping.  So you could run by tapping your fingers on the book or you could break brick and squish enemies by slamming your fist on the book. 

Then I decided if it is supposed to be like a video game, then it should have buttons, and I made a replica of a Nintendo DS, but it wasn’t very good at all.  The touch pad was a piece of tape, and the stylus was made of cardboard, which was a very bad choice.  (At least that stylus looked the most like a DS stylus of any of the controllers I’ve made.)  It was still a lot of fun doing that.  That was around when we started calling it Paper Wario.

Then I made a better controller.  Its buttons were made from a drinking straw that I cut into pieces and taped onto the cardboard.  These buttons worked well but were not the last design that I would make.  Its problem was its direction control.  I didn’t have space for two buttons, so I made one button out of a straw that I strung on a toothpick so that you could slide it on the toothpick and press down when it was in the position you wanted it to be in.  But that was slow if you wanted to change direction fast in your game. 

The third controller was really good.  I made it hinged, so that you could close it up like a real DS.  It had full buttons, even up and down for 3-D mazes and things.  It also had a compartment in the back to hold games that were folded up.  But I never really used it.  Making them was funner!

I started working on another controller that couldn’t fold but was of two pieces, but it had no buttons and I gave up on it before it was done. 

Then I worked on a fifth one.  I tried to make it hinged, but I kept cutting off the hinges by accident, so that it only had one side with a hinge.  I just stuck a bunch of toothpicks in it so that it wouldn’t fold.  This one was the smallest of all of them.  The others were too big.  Then in the place where the hinge would be, I made three styluses.  I also put on a piece of paper on the front bottom.  This one’s stylus pad was nice, too.  It was made of silver tape, and I rounded out the edges.  It was better, too, because if you have two pieces, then when you use the stylus, it might mess with the edge of the one in the middle.  And I made styrofoam buttons because they were squishy and were easier to glue on (I was trying to make it look good and not use tape).

Now that I’ve told you about what I’ve been doing with Paper Wario, maybe you will want to try for yourself. 

Make Your Own Cardboard Controller

Step 1: Take one or two pieces of cardboard, depending on whether you want it hinged or one piece.

Step 2: Make your stylus pad by gluing on a piece of tape that has already been used (so that it has a tape surface but paper on the bottom so that you can cut it into rounded edges without the tape sticking to your hands).  If you don’t have one handy, then just use a regular piece of tape.  

Step 3: (Optional) Cut the pieces, if you have two, like hinges.  You can use a real DS to see how.  But make sure that your cardboard is corrugated horizontally.  Then fit them together and stick a toothpick through the corrugation tunnels to connect the two pieces.  Now the controller will fold, but not completely.

Step 4: Pick a toothpick and wrap a bunch of tape around one end.  This is your stylus.  Then stick it in one of the corrugation tunnels on the side of your controller.  Make as many as you want!

Step 5: Make a button out of either a piece of cardboard or a cut-up straw or a styrofoam ball.  For cardboard, tape one side of the folded piece onto the controller and bend the other over it and label it.  For straw, take a thin sliver of tape and tape it on (you don’t want to put it over the edges of the straw).  Then glue a piece of paper below it and label the paper.  For styrofoam, glue a styrofoam ball onto the controller.  This should be practiced first on another piece so that you get it right and don’t mess up your controller.  You also need to carefully take a pen and make a label directly on the styrofoam.

Make Your Own Paper Videogame

After you make a controller, you will want a game to play with it.

Step 1: Get a blank piece of paper to use and come up with a name for your game, like Paper Wario.

Step 2: Make a starting point and add little obstacles to get past.  For example, one where you have to operate a cannon to destroy a barricade, or one where you have to logroll on something.  Then make a boss enemy that you get to at the end who has a star and something else like a shield or a smiley face or something (you will have to fight the boss enemy at the end to complete the mission).

Step 3: Then make a few more missions or mazes, and scatter around your symbol (smiley face, shield, etc.) in them but don’t put them in every mission. 

Step 4: After you’ve made three missions, make a super boss for that level of the paper game.  The super boss should be kind of like a stadium, too, where you have to climb up on him to get the star and to go a bunch of places to prepare everything and destroy him.

Step 5: Make characters you can unlock, like Donkey Kong, Toad, and Peach, and give them special prices in stars (which you collect after completing a mission).  When you get five of your symbols, then you get to have bonus characters like Fire Mario, Bee Mario, or Boom Mario.

Step 6: Have fun!