After the success of the original Gameboy Advance version and Touched on the DS, Nintendo is back again with the third original WarioWare game to date. But rather than simply rehash the ideas in the original, Nintendo has gone a different route; the game pack comes with a motion sensor built right into it, and most of the mini-games revolve around usage of this. This often makes for some utterly nonsensical gameplay, which is exactly what we love and expect from the series.
If you're a WarioWare newbie I'll give you a quick rundown of the general concept involved. WarioWare isn't a game so much as a collection of sets of "micro mini-games". And when I say micro I mean it; each mini-game lasts about 4-5 seconds long and has a very simplistic goal, such as avoiding getting hit in the face with some baseballs, shooting down a few enemy ships, or in one of my favorite mini-games, rolling the morph ball Samus to the missile upgrade before the time runs out. The goal is to see how many mini-games you can beat without running out of lives, and the further you get, the faster and trickier it gets to beat them. There are over 200 mini-games involved, broken up into sets based on certain themes, be it "small twists only", "spinning and pressing A" or everyone's favorite "Nintendo games”, which takes classic Nintendo games like Super Mario Brothers 3, Kid Icarus, Duck Hunt and more, and gives them a new, pardon the pun, twist. Every once in awhile you hit a "boss" stage, which gives you a chance to play a mini-game that often lasts, gasp!, minutes at a time; but once it is over, right back into the frantic micro mini-games you go. All of this is done with basically 3 movements; twist the GBA left, twist the GBA right, press the A button. That is it. Three movements, and yet the game is entirely addicting.
The motion sensor hardware works perfectly. I have to admit I was expecting it to have a few hiccups, but this isn't the case. In many respects, moving by twisting the GBA gives you a sort of true analog control, as opposed to using a mere digital pad. And Nintendo, of course, built many games around the motion sensor rather brilliantly. One of my favorites is a "boss" stage which simply requires you to keep the ground level under a guy as he slowly walks to the right. However, the ground has some major bumps, and eventually a few 90 degree turns and such, so that by the end of the stage you are actually holding the GBA upside-down. Another of my favorites is the boss stage in the Nintendo themed games, which has you going through various mini Super Mario Brothers levels, complete with mushrooms and goombas and other nostalgic favorites.
The only negative is that the main game, ever so slightly, seems to lack the variety of the original GBA game. Sometimes it is hard to ignore the fact that some of the mini-games are incredibly similar to others, if not the exact same mini-game with a different face on it. However, Nintendo does an awful lot more than you might expect with just the 3 movements, so it really isn't a huge issue.
WarioWare: Twisted! packs perhaps the most impressive array of unlockables I have ever seen. A good portion of them are just weird sort of motion sensor demo type things, like moveable figurines and bouncy balls, but there are over 20 unlockable games as well. Some of these are just longer, more fleshed out versions of some of the mini-games played during the main game, but others are completely unique games. My favorite is Apple Assault, a game in which you get a cannon that continually shoots Warios out and you have to shoot these apple creatures whom are attacking. Big bomb apple creatures come along every once in awhile and when you shoot them the Warios hang on them and then you can blow them up with the A button. Simple, yet addictive. Another cool one is Mewtroid; yes you heard me, Mewtroid. It is sort of like Metroid with a cat. Except not really. I’ll let you figure that one out on your own. I often spend as much time on these unlockable games as I do on the main game.
Graphically the game often looks like something drawn by an eight year old in Microsoft Paint, though at other times it looks like something drawn by an excellent graphical artist... in Microsoft Paint. This isn't to say it is an ugly game though, it is a purposeful choice that fits really well with the wacky style of the game. The music is also generally pretty wacky, though at times there are some really emotional tunes.
It's really difficult to explain how excellent the WarioWare games can be in words. It seems like a bunch of micro mini-games would get old, but the real joy isn't in the games themselves so much as the frantic pace at which they keep coming at you, and the quest to get higher and higher scores. It's twitch gaming at its best, and it can be very addicting. If you have never played a WarioWare game, now is the time to check one out, and Twisted is the perfect choice. If you love the original but were disappointed in Touched, I would still suggest trying out Twisted, as, in my opinion, it captures the addictive qualities and the pure fun factor that the original did, whereas Touched came up a bit short. Just be a little wary of playing this one in public… you
will look like a fool spinning around your GBA. Though it will be oh so worth it.
(Author's note: I wrote this review when the game came out, slightly edited a few years back.)
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