WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 1/4/2023)

[Image from igdb.com]

WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Action

Platforms: GBA

Release Date: March 21, 2003

What is Wario’s relation to Mario, exactly? Is he Mario’s cousin with only a slight familial resemblance? Is he a crazed, deluded fan who dresses similarly to Mario to emulate his likeness out of both worship and a desire to vanquish him? He debuted in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins and the grainy, mobile Mario series on the original Gameboy took some creative liberties with Mario’s properties in an attempt to discern it from the mainline series. Besides the setting of Sarasaland and having to rescue another princess that would later become Peach’s designated tennis partner for the end of time, Wario was one of the new villains the game introduced in lieu of not having Bowser at the helm. Nintendo’s intentions for Wario mirrored the same dynamic as Bizzaro Superman: an uglier, uncanny counterpart who also exhibits unsavory, villainous character traits as opposed to their heroic doppelganger. In Wario’s case, he’s greedy, lecherous, hedonistic, oafish, and about as unhygienic as a New Orleans hobo. Such negative qualities do not apply to Nintendo’s regal mascot Mario, so that’s why Wario exemplifies his “anti-Mario” role so splendidly. There is a concealed advantage to being Mario’s sleazy antithesis, however, and that is that Wario has more free will to do whatever he pleases. He’s the spare among Mario characters like Prince Harry and Billy Carter before him, a liberating role that Mario cannot fulfill, for he is too busy representing Nintendo’s wholesome brand to do anything out of his comfort zone. Sadly, Luigi can’t even run wild because he is tied too closely to Mario, so only Wario can be granted this freedom because he’s the disreputable wildcard. The Wario Land series was already a subversive take on Mario’s 2D platformers, but Nintendo went one step beyond what Wario was capable of. If Wario Land is the “anti-Mario” game, then WarioWare, Inc. (which is what I will be referring to because the full title is long and difficult to type) is an anti-video game in general.

The premise of WarioWare, Inc. is best experienced firsthand in order to fully wrap one’s head around it, but I’ll do my best to detail it succinctly. The player is presented with a litany of “microgames” that the player must complete in a brief window of time, represented visually by the shortening fuse of a bomb at the bottom of the screen. A single-word exclamation gives the player a cursory bit of context of what to do in the fleeting moments with a microgame. The games are ordered in no particular order in a lightning-fast fashion that gets even faster as the numbers accumulate. If the player loses all four lives, they’ll have to start from square one, and defeating the level’s microgame boss will net a completion. Playing the level again after completing it is an arcade endurance test where superseding the boss battle unlocks another faster tier of the same microgames with additional enhancements that increase their difficulty. The player will be granted an extra life if they’ve lost one along the way. I’ve often bemoaned games with arcade difficulties on consoles, but that pertains more to games unsuited for it, like platformers. WarioWare’s blazing onslaught of microgames works perfectly for the incremental arcade format. Some may argue that the game doesn’t give the player enough leeway to complete the microgames due to the hasty window of opportunity the game provides to complete them without fail. I often struggled with microgames that I hadn’t experienced before. However, the game wouldn’t feel as zany and exhilarating without it. None of the microgames are very punishing or require a steep learning curve after initially encountering them, so I can only fault my lack of experience and not the game’s design. That, and most microgames are integrated often as they pop up often enough to practice, and the mechanics usually only require the player to press A with timing and slight D-pad maneuvers.

Then there’s the matter of describing what the micro games consist of. Using the word “random” is an understatement, and likening the five-second flashes of the microgames to a fever dream would be a slight cliche. Still, I can’t think of anything else as a more suitable comparison for the tense, baffling rollercoaster ride that is experiencing WarioWare’s content. Many microgames feature pixelated graphics, while others exhibit more rudimentary Atari or NES-era pixels. Some microgames are drawn with crude animation, and some are beautiful enough to bestow in an art exhibit. It seems like Nintendo had freelance artists submit anything they could come up with, and they chose the best ones to feature in the game. As for what the player will experience, let’s do an old-fashioned highlight reel. A disembodied hand must wait for his toast to pop from the toaster, and the player must catch it before it hits the ground. A cute girl stares at a nightfall landscape with a lighthouse, or at least she would be cute if she didn’t have a viscous strand of snot the length of my arm hanging out of her nose that the player must suck back up (you killed my boner, Nintendo). More realistically, humanoid versions of Mario and Bowser wrestle and shoot energy balls at each other. An umbrella protects a pixelated cat from rainfall, a blocky, dinky character named Fronk must evade being stomped on, and a barber cuts too much from his customer's head to the point where he’s rendered a cueball, and the customer literally fumes red with anger. Accuracy-oriented boss microgames involve timing hammer bashes to a nail, a quick round of Punch-Out, and a minimal RPG duel that reminds me of Earthbound. I will not detail any more microgames, for I didn’t even scratch the surface with the few I mentioned; there are so many. Hilarity ensues every second in WarioWare from the bewildering mix of the microgame’s content in relation to the split-second reaction time needed to pass. Even if I fail a microgame, I’m still entertained by the absurdity. Digging through the levels after completion is optional, but I still wanted to see the full extent of wackiness the game still offered.

WarioWare Inc. is supported by a new slew of eclectic characters totally removed from Mario’s universe. How someone as physically and emotionally repugnant as Wario made so many friends is a mystery. Still, every level in WarioWare is themed around one of Wario’s new compatriots and their stories or a pair of them in the case of Dribble and Spitz and Kat and Ana. Preppy, teenage Mona is late for work and is caught speeding by the cops. Instead of submitting to their authority, a monkey flings bananas at them from the seat of her moped. The player must stave off the police’s pursuit of Mona by completing the games, with a banana peel toppling over a cop car at every successful completion. Dribble and Spitz run a cab company and escort a man who is a merman hybrid to the shores, and he doesn’t even pay them the fare. Some character’s levels coincide with a more concise microgame theme like Orbulon’s memory matching and fan favorite 9-Volt’s video game-themed microgames that involve tasks relating to classic Nintendo games like The Legend of Zelda and F-Zero. Wario’s final level is a demanding roulette of the hardest challenges at the swiftest of speeds, and all integrate himself in some fashion. I guess narcissism is yet another unsavory characteristic of Wario. WarioWare’s cast is not comprised of complicated characters, yet they work well for a game of this nature.

The true nature of WarioWare, Inc. is that it’s a scam. That’s right: Wario crafted this game with his friends for a quick rich scheme, duping all you suckers into buying a game for full price that consists of nothing but crumbs of content. Knowing him, he probably spent the rest of the budget on hookers and blow. It mirrors what the developers did in real life, and it’s probably a comment on how video games became so resplendent and complex in the then-recent years (and it’s only gotten more so in time). They delivered a game that contrasts the normal standard of modern gaming experiences with minimal silliness. However, playing WarioWare doesn’t make me feel cheated. Nintendo’s direction in making an “anti-video game” started one of the most refreshing, funny, and surprisingly invigorating series they’ve ever released. Who better to represent digital anarchy than the unscrupulous Wario? His new biker outfit is a badge of anarchy.

WarioWare: Smooth Moves Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 3/21/2022)

[Image from igdb.com]

WarioWare: Smooth Moves

Developer: Nintendo, Intelligent Systems

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Party

Platforms: Wii

Release Date: December 2, 2006

Many people will say that Wii Sports was the tech demo that showcased the potential of the console’s motion controls. Judging by the accessible basis of sports and the fact that Nintendo put a copy of the game inside every box the console was shipped in, this was Nintendo’s clear intention for Wii Sports, and they succeeded without a doubt. As I’ve said before, Wii Sports had a shelf life of approximately an hour before the novelty of the motion controls wore off, and the initial excitement ran thin. Fortunately, early Wii owners had the alternative of playing Twilight Princess, but at the cost of alienating everyone else from the family-friendly intrigue that radiated from the Nintendo Wii. What if I told you that there was another early Wii game that one could enjoy with others that showcased the vast parameters of Nintendo’s ambitious motion-controlled console? No, it’s not Wii Play because that game had an even slimmer shelf life of fun than Wii Sports did. I’m talking, of course, about WarioWare: Smooth Moves, the fourth installment of the absurd party game franchise that more or less exists to display innovative ways to use Nintendo’s hardware for many of its consoles. If Wii Sports was the vehicle to exhibit that the motion controls of the Wii were competent, WarioWare: Smooth Moves is the vehicle to show that they were fun.

Reviewing WarioWare based on its contents would prove superfluous upon its fourth entry. Smooth Moves is the same game as the previous three entries and upholds what we’ve expected from the series. It’s a cavalcade of wacky microgames made to be completed in mere seconds. The player must complete a certain number of them and only gets four chances to screw up. The time to complete these microgames gets thinner as the player progresses, and a boss microgame usually takes longer and requires the more substantial use of the controls. These microgames are divided into minuscule stories between the eclectic cast of Wario’s compadres. This summary basically sums up the premise of every game in the series, so what gives each game its unique appeal? Smooth Moves was the first game in the series to be developed for a mainline Nintendo console instead of being relegated to a handheld system. The first WarioWare game was ported to the Gamecube, but that was merely the GBA game on more advanced hardware. Smooth Moves was designed with the Wii’s hardware in mind, and the kinetic nature of the system fits this series like a glove. The previous WarioWare games on Nintendo’s handheld systems were party games in theory, but having a party around the pocket-sized screen of the GBA or the DS sounds lame as hell. One of the cardinal rules listed to the player when starting Smooth Moves is to “lower your inhibitions,” which implies that they will be using the Wii’s motion controls to make a complete jackass of themselves. The prerogative of Smooth Moves is like dancing: one can do it alone, but it’s better to perform with others. Smooth Moves is the first WarioWare game that is fully realized as a party game, giving Smooth Moves more vibrant energy than none of the previous games had.

Conducting the various microgames in Smooth Moves is done more methodically than in previous titles. The Wiimote is a comparatively more versatile tool than something like the DS stylus or the body of the GBA, and the microgames take advantage of this range of uses. The Wiimote is a swiss-army knife of practicalities, illustrated by a calming tutorial that sounds like the “deep thoughts” segment from SNL. The player will put the Wiimote in positions ranging in kinetic involvement, starting with using the Wiimote like a remote control to more involved uses like placing it on the player’s head like a mohawk. The smattering of stances can be used for many purposes. For example, The player will use the umbrella stance to simulate drinking liquid, the discard stance to pick up the Wiimote with precise timing, the boxer stance to toss a shuriken, etc. An optional story with Orbulon involves microgames that utilize the nunchuck, incorporating the additional connection in a few ways. The suggested stance to complete each microgame is great at assisting the player, and getting involved with performing each stance with the Wiimote is amusingly silly fun in itself. The unfortunate thing about using the Wiimote to complete microgames is that the more involved stances tend to conflict with the sensory aspect of the Wii. I could’ve sworn that I was executing the “mortar and pestle” stance correctly, but I could never get the hang of the microgames that involved the stance and never figured out how to perform them accurately. Other than those minor instances, most of the forms are fluid.

WarioWare games are also pretty light on plot, and Smooth Moves follows that consistent formula. As mentioned before, the various microgames are divided into subplots involving the kooky staple characters of the series. Mona is cheerleading for a high school football game, and Kat and Ana defend their fort from a monstrously tall demon. 9-Volt and 18-Volt have a spat over a busted Game and Watch resolved over a series of Nintendo game-themed microgames they’ve become known for like they are the Treehouse of Horror episodes of WarioWare segments. The vaguely overarching plot with Wario involves him taking an ancient relic shaped like a Wiimote. The scene is escalated with him sprinting away from a boulder booby trap like Raiders of the Lost Ark. He then divides himself into mini Warios because a faulty motorbike culminates in rebuilding and returning the Wiimote relic to where he found it. The plots here are as light, roundabout, and appropriately bizarre for the WarioWare series and are unfortunately as short as the other games. Unlike the other games, Smooth Moves augments the game's length with tons of side content. Besides the additional Orbulon story, progressing through the game will unlock tons of minigames that have unique uses for the Wiimote. Many multiplayer games use most if not all of the microgames from the single-player game. The staggering wealth of extra content is exactly what the game needed to expand its playtime beyond the main short story typical of the series.

The ultimate prerogative for the Nintendo Wii was to usher in motion controls in gaming beyond any peripheral before. Wii Sports was a nice sampler of what the Wii was capable of, but I doubt anyone regularly played any of the game's sports on display. In a way, WarioWare is a series made to showcase the parameters of kinetic prowess for any Nintendo system. Nintendo would’ve been foolish not to utilize the series for their killer app. Executing WarioWare’s signature microgames had never required such involvement from the player before. Doing so will have the player in stitches from laughing at the game and themselves. In many ways, WarioWare: Smooth Moves is the perfect Wii game because it best uses the novelty of motion controls.