Nintendo Didn't Bat An Eye At Waluigi's Crotch Thrust In Mario Strikers

thegamer.com:

Mario Strikers is finally making a comeback. The soccer-themed Mario game will arrive on the Nintendo Switch as Mario Strikers Battle League on June 10, and that has people wondering if Waluigi's famously risque victory dance will also be returning too.

We don't really know the answer to that as we're still several months away from the game's release, but we can at least offer some conjecture courtesy of an interview with Mike Ingelhart, former Mario Strikers developer at Next Level Games and director of the original GameCube Super Mario Strikers (2006) and the Wii’s Mario Strikers Charged (2011). Speaking to GameXplain (thanks, Screen Rant!), Ingelhart revealed the origin of Waluigi's infamous crotch chop and how he never really thought Nintendo would let such a gesture stay in the game.

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"The inspiration for that came from the shape. Even though it's a 'V' we thought it was a representation of part of the 'W', so that's his sort of way of connecting into his first initial," explained Ingelhart.

"Waluigi, we kind of depicted him as being... a bit edgier than Wario. Wario is kind of on the nose in terms of being a bad guy, [but] Waluigi, we wanted to explore him a bit more. Wario is about self-loathing, while Waluigi is about blame."

Surprisingly, Nintendo never even "batted an eye" at Waluigi's victory dance despite Ingelhart's expectations that it would have gotten the chop.

"[We] just didn't expect it to get through, but nobody batted an eye so we didn't bring it up because we wanted it to be in [the game]. Sure enough, it landed the way we expected it to."

Ingelhart isn't sure if the cross chop will make it into the third sequel, but he hopes "it's still