A few years ago, Hisashi Koinuma, Koei Tecmo’s president, said in an interview he would love to create a Musou game within the Mario universe… As a fan of the franchise, I started to imagine how you could adapt the crazy over-the-top action of Musou games to the more peaceful and simple Mario universe. I wrote moveset ideas for dozens of characters and, stumbling upon the file some time ago, I started to draw concert art for them.

I wanted to go in a stylish, colorful direction and use pop culture archetypes to modify the character design and abilities. So I attributed a theme to each character and built a moveset around each while using a maximum of elements from the series.

For example, Mario being the brave main character, I naturally went with a super hero theme for him. I combined the fire flower and the cape powerups to create a fiery moveset for him.

With the same logic in mind, Bowser became a warlord in armor, Princess Peach a magical girl, Wario a wrestler,…