The reason behind Waluigi's infamous crotch-centric Mario Strikers celebration
Putting the balls in football.
Waluigi has a very interesting way of celebrating his achievements in Mario Strikers. The tall and lanky dark horse of the Mario series would gesture at his crotch area while simultaneously thrusting his hips forward. This is known as a 'Crotch chop', and not something that many would expect to see in the family friendly Mario games.
And yet, we did.
Chatting to GameXplain, Mike Inglehart (formerly of Mario Strikers developer Next Level Games and the director of the original GameCube Super Mario Strikers and Wii Mario Strikers Charged) has spoken more about Waluigi's gyrating taunt (thanks, Screen Rant).
"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.
"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. With Waluigi, we wanted to explore him a bit more."
This is not to say that Inglehart assumed that this crotch chop would make it to the final cut. However, no one at Nintendo "batted an eye" so the team just decided never to bring it up as they wanted to keep it in there.
So, will Waluigi's crotch chop make it into Mario Strikers: Battle League Football? Your guess is as good as mine, but it will be something to look out for.
Elsewhere, a recent dive into the files of the original Super Mario Strikers has revealed a rather unusual set of unused characters, including a team of "generic Mario style humans".