The Glass of Milk trilogy is a series of Mario Fan Games created by LangtonLion64 centered primarily around milk.
The series consists of 3 games where you take control of the titular character on their milk related quest, as things quickly spiral out of control when the milk turns out to be more than meets the eye, the second and third game prominently drawing inspiration from the Mega Man series in being action platformers compared to the series roots of straight platformers.
The three games are as follows:
- Mario Drinks a Glass of Milk: Mario drinks a glass of milk and travels the Mushroom Kingdom in search of different varieties of milk.
- Luigi Doesn't Drink a Glass of Milk: Following Mario's quest for milk, he disappears, which Luigi believes is no coincidence because of the recent boom in the milk industry and infiltrates the local milk factory to confirm his suspicions.
- Wario Destroys a Glass of Milk: Wario, in an attempt to get in touch with the Mario brothers also begins his own investigation into the milk industry after witnessing a suspicious meeting.
The games are free to download from LangtonLion64's fan game library
from Mario Fan Games Galaxy, and it is recommended to play the games in order to avoid spoilers.
The series provides examples of:
- Actionized Sequel: Luigi and Wario's games play almost exactly like a Mega Man game, with Luigi being the Mega Man/X to Wario's Zero, with Luigi focusing on shooting enemies and sucking up obstacles with an E. Gadd provided invention, whereas Wario focuses more on his brute strength as depicted in the Wario Land series.
- Adaptation Personality Change:
- Mario is depicted as being considerably more irritable than he is in canon, compared to how unflappably positive he normally is.
- Wario is presented as being much less brusque, simply trying to contact the Mario brothers for non-malicious reasons at the start of his game before witnessing events that spur him into action, and while he still maintains his sense of bravado, he's not completely dense and is unusually introspective and driven compared to how he usually is.
- Professor E. Gadd is depicted suffering from such a severe bout of loneliness after the events of Luigi's Mansion that he becomes obsessed with dairy products and for some reason invents a dimensional portal through which he meets Dr. Wily who helps him creates his factory heads to aid his takeover of the milk industry.
- All Just a Dream: Mario's quest for milk and show down with Milk Man is revealed to be this, which also just so happens to be Luigi dreaming about Mario dreaming about milk. Luigi's explanation of his strange dream is waved off by Mario, until it turns out Luigi's dream was prophetic.
- Anti-Villain: Downplayed. The motive behind Professor E. Gadd's actions is that he was suffering from loneliness due to the Mario Bros. not visiting him, and the destruction of the milk factory at the end of the second game left him in a desperate situation which led him to resort to decisions that he himself regretted doing. Regardless, he still caused harm to the Mario Bros. and ordered his creations to basically kill their own siblings, though he does manage to turn over a new leaf after Wario humbles him.
- Bad with the Bone: By drinking milk, Mario gains the ability to turn into a skeleton and hurl bones around. The same goes for Dr. Wily's second phase.
- Big Damn Heroes: When Luigi has Milk Man at his mercy, he's caught off guard and incapacitated by Bean and is seemingly going to be finished off when a presumed dead Mario uses his milk-granted bone powers to join Luigi for his final boss battle.
- Boss Warning Siren: The warning splash from the PS1 Mega Man X trilogy appears before a boss battle in the second and third games. Wario's game adds a "Ready? FIGHT!" splash accompanied by the announcer from Street Fighter III.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Luigi is confronted by his Dairy Godmother and promptly tries to escape offscreen deciding he's had enough.Luigi: Where the heck did these level boundaries suddenly come from?
- Charged Attack: Luigi can gain an upgrade to his milk-shooter that allows him to flash freeze projectiles into explosive ice-cream missiles, and Wario can innately charge his attacks to deal more damage or smash through harder blocks a la the Wario Land games.
- Checkpoint: Compared to the two series the games are based off of, checkpoints are very generously placed throughout the levels in addition to the fact you have unlimited lives. Amusingly, Luigi's checkpoints are toasters that turn green and pop-up two freshly toasted bread slices when reached, and Wario's checkpoints are baskets that immediately fill up with garlic bread when reached.
- Continuity Nod:
- At the end of the first game, Mario meets a Princess Dairy, who turns into a cow and jumps away with a message of "OH! DAIRY".
- Several mass-produced Milk Man clones appear to challenge Wario throughout his game, each one imitating a Robot Master, namely Elec Man, Shadow Man, Splash Woman... and a Doc Robot. Given that the Doc Robots themselves are Moveset Clones, the last Milk Man clone gets stuck in a loop of attempting to load Doc Robot's nonexistent combat data and can be killed in one hit.
- The second phase of the Doctor Wily battle uses the same initial pattern as the alien hologram from Mega Man 2, flying around the room in a figure-eight and throwing bones at Wario's position. However, he can teleport, and occasuonally goes offscreen to barrage the arena with milk bottles.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Dr. Wily's grand scheme is to steal Gadd's milk replication technology so he can... sell milk in his home universe and rake in the dough.
- Death Throws: As in their home series, the protagonists fall off the screen in cartoony fashion on death. Mario similarly does as such when Luigi kills him, though he simply comes back to life offscreen because he had extra lives.
- Developer's Foresight: Each of the factory heads have different conversations with Wario based on the order he takes them on in and will have a different message on death depending on whether or not they were the first one taken out or if Wario defeated them with their weakness or not.
- Dual Boss: In the second game, Milk Man and Bean fight together as the joint Final Boss. In the third game's intro stage, Wario fights two Milk Man clones with Gadd's spectacles.
- Easter Egg:
- In the third game, occasionally the boss warning graphic will cut off at the "WA" and flash yellow, accompanied by Wario saying "WA" in time with the siren.
- Also in the third game, kicking a rock into one of the nets in Whipster's stage causes text saying "GOOOOOOOOOOOAL!" to move across the screen and prompts the announcer to say "ALRIGHT! THAT'S COOL!"
- Fall Damage: Much like their home series, the protagonists can fall from any height so long as they don't fall into any hazards such as Bottomless Pits or various hot liquids with no repurcussions. This is lampshaded in both Luigi's and Wario's games where characters fall from seemingly perilous heights and panic before realizing they're in no danger once they land completely unharmed.
- Foreshadowing: Its very easy to miss, but when Bean reads the serial number of the last factory head Wario defeated, its initialized in the familiar GWN-000. Mega Man fans will likely be quick to realize that the "G" ostensibly stands for Gadd, and that the "W" could only refer to one character from the series.
- Funny Background Event: Non visual example. In the third game when Milk Man, Bean, Mario, and Luigi are about to fight each other, Wario demands them to stop and talk things out while he goes see the professor. When Wario enters the next room, you could hear the Bros. duking it out with the robots anyway.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: Luigi lampshades this when he mentions that Wario is "that guy Mario always invites to our parties."
- Greater-Scope Villain: After Wario defeats E. Gadd and talks him down, a familiar saucer flies down and its revealed that E. Gadd's Ridiculously Human Robots were co-created by none other than Dr. Wily after E. Gadd's dimensional portal research causes a chance meeting between the two, who has also stolen E. Gadd's milk research in order to take it back to his own world and become an entrepreneur, and takes over as the Final Boss.
- Heel–Face Turn: After defeating the 4 factory heads he remembered the locations of, Wario is attacked by Bean and Milk Man causing him to drop a component from the last factory head he defeated, leading them to realize E. Gadd's been using them to not only destroy their brothers and sisters, but that they might also be next on the list, causing them to team up with Wario to confront the professor. E. Gadd also turns over a new leaf once he's defeated by Wario and has some sense talked into him by the protagonists and his robots.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: Mario gets into one of these with Milk Man, as he's unable to damage Milk Man by jumping on him. It's only once Mario is defeated that the milk powers take over and Mario turns into a skeleton who can shoot giant bones as projectiles which can damage Milk Man.
- Immediate Sequel: The third game begins with the ending of the second game, where the Mario Bros. immediately run into Wario.
- Improbable Weapon User: In classic E. Gadd fashion, he assists Luigi on his quest by giving him the Familkom Dairy System, a combination Poltergust and old game console that can suck and shoot milk and milk-based products.
- Intercontinuity Crossover: Between the Mario and Mega Man series, as several common Mega Man enemies appear throughout Luigi and Wario's adventures, and Luigi even receives messages and upgrades from Professor E. Gadd through the Dr. Light capsules from the X series. There's a very good reason for that, as E. Gadd's interdimensional research leads to him meeting Dr. Wily, who helps him co-create the Gadd-Wily series robot masters to assist with E. Gadd's milk research.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Wario's heart of gold is on full display here. While he's still crass and arrogant, he genuinely wants to be friends with Mario and Luigi and even tries to deal with Gadd and his robots peacefully. As the game points out, he's vile, but not evil.
- Logical Weakness: Three of the four stage bosses in the third game have fairly intuitive weaknesses - the burning-hot Billie is smothered by Sand Spinner, Heck Fire melts Trucker, and Ice Missiles send Leaf crashing back down to the ground.
- Medium Awareness: Wario seems to acknowledge that the blaring warning siren means that there's a boss fight. Later, when Wario accidentally leads Bean and Milk Man to Mario and Luigi and the four of them prepare to throw down, the warning siren sounds, only for Wario to pull the graphic down and chuck it off screen before yelling at everyone to stop.
- One-Hit Kill: GWN-010 initially opens his fight with the Raging Demon, and uses it more when his health is low. After beating him, Wario can use the Raging Demon to OHK anything, even boss battles.
- One-Winged Angel: Dr. Wily bulks up after drinking a glass of milk. And when his first health bar is depleted, he turns into a skeleton.
- Only Sane Man: Surprisingly, it's Wario of all people who gets hit with this, checking out the heads of the milk industry on the simple premise that they're related to the disappearance of the Mario brothers and is quick defuse tensions between the Mario brothers, Milk Man and Bean, and even talks down E. Gadd when he's convinced he's irredeemable. Lastly, he's not convinced by Dr. Wily's pleas for mercy and promptly tosses him back to his own dimension at E. Gadd's prompting.
- The Pig-Pen: Wario's legendary body odor is a running gag in the third game.
- Plot Allergy: Played for Laughs, Luigi is revealed to be comically lactose-intolerant, to the point that even wearing a tank full of milk on his back will damage him over time. Though he evidently has no problem being completely submerged in a sea of milk however.
- Power Copying: In true Mega Man fashion, Wario gains an ability after defeating one of the normal stage bosses based off of said boss. These abilities are upgrades to his existing moveset that incorporate one of the boss's motifs.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: The Mario brothers and Wario meet some very human robots (Wario doesn't even realize that they're robots until later), most prominently Milk Man, a wholesale Shout-Out to the Mega Man series. As it turns out, there's a very good reason as to why they're so similar to the Robot Masters.
- Shout-Out:
- Mario and Luigi's milk drinking minigame is the Stardew Valley fishing minigame, and the fish reeling music from Sonic Adventure plays as Mario chugs down the milk. Wario gets the same minigame for throwing Dr. Wily back to his home universe.
- When Mario transforms into a skeleton, Megalovania starts playing.
- The level select screens/maps are based off of the Mega Man series.
- The opening level of Luigi's game is set to the famous Central Highway theme and even finds a Dr. Light capsule left by Professor E. Gadd that gives Luigi a Poltergust-like contraption to suck and shoot milk at his enemies.
- The Boss Warning Siren that plays in Luigi's and Wario's games is the same warning siren and splash as the one used in the fourth, fifth, and sixth Mega Man X games.
- In lieu of the Octopus Batteries as the enemy type that slides from one point to another, their role is instead taken over by Gordos.
- Luigi's checkpoints in the second game are toasters... or perhaps, Nintoasters?
- Wario's boss fights are preceded by the round start fanfare from Third Strike. Additionally, a Akuma-like Milk Man/Zero hybrid exists as a Superboss.
- Several Fuzzies appear in the Tea Forest, and touching them does exactly what you'd expect.
- Wario unintentionally bungles the pronunciation of Dr. Wily as Dr. Wahwee in reference to the
infamous voice acting of Mega Man 8.
- Stealth Prequel: The entire trilogy as a whole is revealed to be one for not only Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga when E. Gadd suggests to his robots that he knows a place with plenty of beans where they could open a coffee shop, but also one to Super Mario 64 DS when after the plot is resolved, Mario receives a familiar letter and invites Wario to come with them, the game ending as Mario, Luigi and Wario all jump into warp pipes to go to Peach's castle.
- Stealth Pun: Leaf's weakness is the Ice Missiles. She even lampshades it herself when defeated by it.Leaf: Ha. Iced tea. I get it.
- Superboss: By collecting all four "RAGE" letters in the third game, Wario can fight GWN-010 in the first Gadd stage. Take Zero's raw power and combine with Akuma's rage, and you get GWN-010.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: In the third game, there are a total of eight robots that each run a different company, but Wario only fights four of them due to his short term memory only allowing him to remember four of the locations, while Milk Man and Bean took care of the other four under E. Gadd's orders. It's later revealed that they were all creations of E. Gadd. During the credits, E. Gadd rebuilds the robots as an apology, but only the ones that Wario fought are seen.
- Villains Want Mercy: After being defeated and losing his skeleton super-mode, Doctor Wily genuflects and begs Wario to spare him, as per Mega Man tradition. Wario almost doesn't before E. Gadd shows up to open a portal for Wario to toss Wily into.
