PixlBit

Number 23

*Disclaimer, the version of the game in this post will be from the 3DS version, not the original format it was on. Please understand. Thanks and continue with the post*

There have been plenty of interesting games by Nintendo that places a character out of their bread and butter. For example, Mario in a party game, Kirby in a golf or pinball game, or Donkey Kong in a first person shooter. But none of them seem to be more bizarre than this one: Wario, everyone’s favorite misunderstood anti-hero, the anti-Mario, the guy who goes on adventures to fill his pockets, is now a video game developer. Yes you heard me right, a game developer. Maybe life as a thief wasn’t cut out for him anymore? Perhaps a run-in with a ghost of a cursed relic scared him off? Maybe a bet with Captain Syrup went sour? Or perhaps he wanted to start his own legit buisness? (Yeah right) Well whatever the reason it was, we have WarioWare.

Well the game starts off with Wario watching tv and he notices a reporter saying video game sales are booming. This gives Wario an idea. He rushes out on his bike to get a pc so he can make his own game. The thing is Wario is not too bright and get’s bored. He then get’s another “brilliant” idea and he calls his friends to help him on his game. This brings up a really important question: Wario has friends? They agree to help him, but you know something is up but whatever.

As for the actual game, or rather games, here’s how it works: each of Wario’s “friends” make up their own games, or microgames, even Wario made some which I assume he hired someone to do them for him. And it’s up to YOU to play and test them. Yes, you, the player. You even have to type your name and stuff. But you’re probably wondering, what’s a microgame?

                
Think of it as a mini-game, only that it ends in 3 seconds. “Wait what?” You might say and complain at it’s length. Well that’s what makes this game unique. The games themselves are rather fun, but sometimes really weird. Remember Wario’s friends? Each of their games are based on a catergory, like 9-Volts are based on Nintendo games and peripherals and Mona’s are weird games. What’s neat is that you get a sort of a backstory to these characters when you want to play their microgames. For instance, in Mona’s story, she’s late for her job so she starts speeding in her scooter. But she is then chased by the police and you have to play her microgames in order for her to get away.

 It’s neat, and each of Wario’s friends have a story that requires you to play through the microgames in order to unfold their story. The only difference is that their microgames are different. Here’s how it works, I said before that you have to play a characters microgames, well you have to play a certain number of them to finish a certain story. You beat a microgame, then you move on to the next microgame right away in a random order. They are at random so you never know which one is coming, which makes it challenging. The games tell you a word about what to do in a microgame in order to move towards the next one. Like it might say shoot, you then have to shoot whats on the screen. The more games you clear, the harder and faster they become. You also have 4 lives, fail a game, you lose a life, fail 4 times and it’s game over. However you can earn a lost life by beating boss stages. Yes this game has boss stages. These aren’t your normal microgames that you’ve been playing. A boss stage may require you to beat a punching bag with Wario or taking a swing at a baseball. You get a small cutscene after a boss stage to briefly catch your breath regardless if you win or lose at a boss stage. You get to see the end of a story for a character if you beat their microgames for the first time.

                    
Also, if you wanna take a break from testing microgames, you can also try out other games within this game. They have this paper airplane game that has you fly a paper air plane for as long as you can before hitting an obstacle. There’s also more games too. There is also this game where you swat flies that was in Mario Paint. There’s even 2-player games too. 

Overall the game is sort of an oddity. The idea of Wario “switching” careers sounds interesting in itself, but you’re really playing this game for the bizarre but fun microgames. It’s basically a game that has mini-games with Wario in it, it seems like Nintendo just added Wario to a non-Wario game. But it makes so much sense since Wario was already doing weird things. They could of used Mario for this, but they decided to let Wario take a crack at the spotlight for once, instead of being another spin-off with Mario’s name in it. Even though technically speaking, Wario is a spin-off series off of Mario, but you get my point.
I know there are more Warioware games out there, and they might be better than this one but this is technically my first and only game of this series that I ever tried and it gave me such a good impression of this series.

If Nintendo ever decides to make smartphone games, this series will be the money maker for them since smartphone games are short and some of them are designed that way when you’re out and about. This would make perfect sense in a phone. Warioware is the most fun you can have in 3 seconds. Literally.        

              

So, have you ever played Wario Ware Inc? Or have you played any of the later games? Thanks for reading and later.