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In the intro is a tournament board with every character in the game. In the bottom left corner of the board you can see the team of Toad and Toadette, hinting that they were possibly planned to appear as playable characters at one point during development.
subdirectory_arrow_right Mario Tennis (Game)
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Waluigi was created by Camelot artist Fumihide Aoki during the development of Mario Tennis as a rival to Luigi. There were also talks of a Princess Peach counterpart to further expand the roster. This proposed "Warupichi" character was ultimately dismissed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo because they were hesitant about making an evil version of Princess Peach, given how she was still portrayed as innocent in earlier games. Despite this, Aoki would keep the character idea around for Mario Power Tennis, featuring another rejected design that would eventually be revealed to the public in 2023, both through unused sketches and a 3D model. In one sketch, the character wields an axe, which according to Aoki, was added to make her "cute and scary". Aoki also revealed more information through Instagram comments, like how "Warupichi" was going to be the authority figure that gave orders to Wario and Waluigi, and how he wanted to make a companion to "Warupichi" that would have been an arch-rival to Yoshi that was going to be a dragon with horns and wings. The day after revealing Warupichi and the rest of this information, Aoki deleted the original posts and locked his Instagram account.
Original DidYouKnowGaming blog post:
https://didyouknowgaming.com/post/30812672774/mario-tennis-source
2000 Camelot interview revealing the existence of Warupichi:
https://www.camelot.co.jp/gimon/gimon13.html
Warupichi character design first Instagram post (now deleted):
https://www.instagram.com/p/C0TpKyDSfOy/?img_index=1
Archived Warupichi concept art and 3D model images:
https://archive.org/details/wapeach
Archived Fumihide Aoki Instagram comment collages (all other comments in the attachment not featured in these two images were captured on desktop directly from Fumihide Aoki's Instagram posts prior to the account being locked down):
https://twitter.com/GenesisJam_/status/1730803149915472217
Warupichi design articles (second link submitted by NintendOtaku):
https://www.polygon.com/23984146/nintendo-wapeach-design-waluigi-creator-mario-tennis
https://www.thegamer.com/waluigi-creator-reveals-wapeach-designs/
Warupichi designs taken down article:
https://www.eurogamer.net/waluigi-creator-shares-then-removes-designs-of-wario-style-peach
https://didyouknowgaming.com/post/30812672774/mario-tennis-source
2000 Camelot interview revealing the existence of Warupichi:
https://www.camelot.co.jp/gimon/gimon13.html
Warupichi character design first Instagram post (now deleted):
https://www.instagram.com/p/C0TpKyDSfOy/?img_index=1
Archived Warupichi concept art and 3D model images:
https://archive.org/details/wapeach
Archived Fumihide Aoki Instagram comment collages (all other comments in the attachment not featured in these two images were captured on desktop directly from Fumihide Aoki's Instagram posts prior to the account being locked down):
https://twitter.com/GenesisJam_/status/1730803149915472217
Warupichi design articles (second link submitted by NintendOtaku):
https://www.polygon.com/23984146/nintendo-wapeach-design-waluigi-creator-mario-tennis
https://www.thegamer.com/waluigi-creator-reveals-wapeach-designs/
Warupichi designs taken down article:
https://www.eurogamer.net/waluigi-creator-shares-then-removes-designs-of-wario-style-peach
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