25 replies to this topic

[RangerG]

Over on the Digital Press website there is a thread talking about how classic and pretty much how great this game is. I want to check this game out for my gameboy advance. Anyone here played it and also recommend it (or dislike it)?

Take care,
RG

[TheSmirk]

I played it for about 10 minutes at Target and I'm hooked! Its a weird but very cool game, lots of mini games and it just keeps moving, I hope to buy it this weekend

[MegaManFan]

I wrote a review in the Game Boy Central forum of VintageGamer where I gave it 9 out of 10. It's very, very good. I just beat Wario, but I'm still going through to unlock all the hidden games and see all the mini-games.

[sdstuff64]

Looks like fun,I was going to import it but that it's in the US I don't have to!

[Ze_ro]

Is there an actual game behind all the mini-games? Like with Mario Party or something? Or do you just pick games from a menu?

I haven't played this game yet, but from what I've seen, it looks stupid.

--Zero

[MegaManFan]

Taken from VintageGamer.com - http://www.vintagega...topic.php?t=533

Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2003 3:14 am

Well it's been almost a week now since the game has been available in stores, and since (I'm kind of surprised that) no one has written a review of the game, I thought I'd plunk down two cents. *coughs*

As I'm sure you all know by now, WarioWare is a collection of "mini-games" that you play one after another in rapid succession. There is a method to this madness - ostensibly Wario's got a "get rich quick" scheme to make money on video games, but he gets bored (and is somewhat lazy) and doesn't want to sit at his computer long enough to make them - so he calls his "friends" (Wario has FRIENDS?) for help. Along the way in the game, you must beat each of his friends to advance, and you do that by making it through 14-24 mini games and one boss game at the end.

At each friend, you're given four chances to fail at mini-games before you lose and have to start them over from the beginning. These are displayed in clever ways - Jimmy's games are on a cell phone, and each life is an LCD light indicating battery life. 9 Volt's games are on a Gameboy showing an RPG, and each time you lose a game you lose one of your 4 HP, and so on. The mini-games themselves aren't overly complex, and that's a good thing for three reasons: the first is that you aren't given any instructions beforehand how to play, the second is that you only get 3 ticks of a smoking bomb to win them, and the third is that the further you advance per "friend" the faster the mini-games are thrown at you (and the faster they go).

The games themselves cover a broad spectrum. Some are pretty basic black and white wire graphics (such as a game where you insert a wavering finger in a nostril - no I'm not kidding, and a game where you pinch a hopping critter with tweezers), some look like stick figure theater (you put out a fire in a burning building, or hop on a stack of figures in a cheerleader pyramid), some look like NES games (you'll recognize Duck Hunt, Metroid, and Super Mario Bros. among others) and some are just completely bizarre (you have to fry an egg in one, and catch a piece of toast in another). Despite their simplicity, the diversity of the games and the speed at which they change keeps them interesting. There's an added bonus - when you defeat Wario's friends, you can go back and play their mini-games individually (they repeat faster and faster until they whiz by at a blur - my high on Metroid is thirty-eight) or as a boss challenge for high score. Normally when you defeat the boss you just move on, but in this mode when you win a boss stage you get one "life" back (unless you already have a full set of 4) and move up to another level where, you guessed it, the mini-games come faster. My high so far in this mode is 62, on 9-Volt's boss challenge.

Still not interested, you say? Well here's the best part - certain mini-games you defeat along the way download new games to your WarioWare cartridge (it actually shows a graphic like you would get when waiting for a file transfer online) that you can play. Some are pretty simple, like a two player "vacumn" challenge where each player is controlled by a left or right shoulder button (it will be interesting to see if this works well on the GBC Player when it comes out), but my favorite so far is a hacked version of Dr. Mario called - Dr. Wario of course! It plays just like the original, so it's like getting a free copy of Dr. Mario along with the game. Me likey, me likey. I can't wait to find out what other NES games or otherwise are hidden in WarioWare.

And that's the secret to this title really - it's the hunt to beat all of the different mini-games each boss has to unlock them on the grid, and to find the ones that unlock more games you can play at your leisure. There are so many different ways to challenge WarioWare that when you get bored with one, you pick another: boss challenge, speed game challenge, stage challenge, whatever. I was skeptical about the concept when it was first announced, and putting Wario into it is really an afterthought - he's just a good name to sell this mini-game challenge, since any character could have played the lead role and not changed the structure of it one bit. Still, if branding it with Wario's name causes more people to pick up this Advance title, I wouldn't think that's a bad thing. Simple enough for the young but challenging enough for the old, I rate WarioWare, Inc. a 9 out of 10 overall. To me, it's a GBA must have!

[NE146]

Play it Ze_ro.. Play the "story mode" from start to finish and you'll see how unique and fresh it is

[kisrael]

NE146 said:

Play it Ze_ro.. Play the "story mode" from start to finish and you'll see how unique and fresh it is

Dang. I can't wait to get this now. I've always been in love with minigames...though haven't seen many single players that were that good. Maybe by changing them every few seconds, it lets the thrill survive...

(Actually, if you want to see some kind of strange minigames I created, strange in that they exist completly inside a single grey HTML pushbutton, check out http://www.kisrael.c...eatures/gb.html ....)

[MegaManFan]

It's actually fun to pick one mini-game from the "grid" mode and play it over and over again too, because each time you beat it the game speeds up and the challenge is to see how fast you can play it at before you smack into a wall. I got up to 42 on the Donkey Kong mini-game and 38 on the Metroid one.

[kisrael]

So I finally got it...pretty cool.

You know what game it really reminds me of? Point Blank 3 for the PS w/ the lightgun.

The pacing, the concept of minigames, and the unmitigated Japanese oddness (wacky characters, various anime signifiers, cheesy animation) are all very similar. Heck, Wario w/ his nose kinda looks like the Point Blank mascots.

[tiggerthehun]

I totally dig it! I'd definately recommend it for a purchase...

[chrisbid]

i just tried it out, incredible, its even better on a big TV w/ the game boy player

[MegaManFan]

http://www.nintendo....essories.jsp#10

Why can't they release the thing already?

[Yar]

I've finished the story mode

Man, that game is great.

[MegaManFan]

Congrats. I just got done unlocking Pyoro; took forever to finally see every mini-game at least once!

[Raijin Z]

Eh, it's alright, but the microgames are just that. Micro. I blew through the entire thing pretty fast. -_-

[kisrael]

Raijin Z said:

Eh, it's alright, but the microgames are just that. Micro. I blew through the entire thing pretty fast. -_-

True 'nuff...once I see all the games, it will be interesting to see how much of a pick up and play for a bit factor this game keeps...it might be substantial, good for a few minutes of gaming fun in a way other games aren't.

[NE146]

I loved the game but I agree that I blew through it rather quickly. I haven't yet unlocked all the minigames (although I did unlock all the bonus games except for the Pyoro's.. But I don't know if I have the patience to play it to that point anymore.

Still though, it was a blast while it lasted. I think I might have enjoyed it more while "discovering" it when it was an import... because I had no notion of what the game was about. Now everyone knows it's a rapid-fire set of minigames that's thrown at you. But when I first played it, it was a big surprise

[MegaManFan]

The great thing about this game is the way it kills a few minutes when you're waiting for something. I was standing in line at EB Games waiting to buy a Quake II for N64, and the GBA SP they had on display had Wario Ware loaded. I fired it up, picked the space alien level (some of the hardest mini games in my opinion) and enjoyed a few frivolous minutes of fun until the other customer was done (he was selling 20 or so PC games and only got $2 or $3 each for them).

[sdstuff64]

I just got it,haven't played it but that instruction book is huge!And it comes with stickers..must play...

[kisrael]

sdstuff64 said:

I just got it,haven't played it but that instruction book is huge!And it comes with stickers..must play...

The stickers are pretty cool. I wish more games would do that.

I remember the sheet of stickers that came with the old black Nintendo Player's Guide...man, that was a great book!

[sdstuff64]

Wow this game is the best.It is crazy,some of it is hard but it is really fun.

How do you get the secret characters?

[SmileyDude]

I love this game -- I started playing it with the Japanese version. Man, some of those micro games can be really tough if you don't know Japanese

The bad part about this game is that it is quickly finished. I was able to beat the game in about 2-3 days. And I unlocked all the mini-games a day or 2 later. Once that's done, you have the challenge of earning the little badge for each of the mini games. Once you do that, everything is pretty much unlocked.

BTW -- Pyoro 2 is much better than Pyoro, IMO -- definetly worth going through the hassle of unlocking and earning the badge for each of the microgames

Another good challenge is to max out the score on Sheriff -- you can get a max of 999,999,999 points on that game

I just hope that there is a followup to this game -- I would love to see something like this for the GCN as well. Maybe next time, they can include some Atari games as well

[RangerG]

I finally got WarioWare. My parents took my wife and I on a short 4th of July cruise so I bought one game to bring with me. Well - it was 100% worth it. It is so addictive and quirky. I'm a very average gameplayer so the difficulty factor is perfect for me (I can see how it might be too easy for game pros). Recommended!

[Tempest]

Strangely addictive. That's all I've got to say. Someone should do a Lynx version of this.

Tempest