My Top 100: #63 – WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgames!

 

As illegal as it might have been, my first experience with this game was on an emulator.  I ended up buying it because I loved it so much, so…  I guess that’s a good thing?

My niece was born in early ’04 on a day with a snow storm of epic proportions.  Though my memory of that event will be recalled in a post much later in my countdown, I only actually got to meet her about two months later.  On that April day in Moncton, it seemed a bit surreal that I was holding a new member of the Suley family in my arms.  After putting her to sleep for the night, we started the trip back to Fredericton.

We stopped at Costco that evening, and I made an impulse buy – a brand new PC.  I’d finally be able to download what I wanted, when I wanted, and could customize it to fit my needs!  All those games I had purchased without having a PC to run them…  I could run them now!  I’d download a few emulators and roms, too!

I had more money at the time, but bought fewer games.  Figure that one out.

Anyhow, one of the first roms I had to download was this WarioWare game that EGM had given a rave review of.  The screenshots looked incredibly strange, and I didn’t understand how such a concept could possibly work.

 

 

At first, I really wasn’t sure what the heck I was supposed to do.  It was all happening so fast!  First it was telling me to catch a stick, then it had me playing pinball with one of Wario’s boogers, then I had to raise this weird eel flag thing…  what was going on?  It was so random and weird, and I had to figure it all out so quick.  Not that the controls were difficult, since it was usually just a question of pressing a single button or arrows on the control pad.

I sat there in my room on my brand new PC, which was capable of playing the latest 3D games of the era without a problem.  Yet here I was, addicted to a game built for a system made to fit in the palm of my hand.  Forget Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and its expansions – I wanted to play this game forever!

WarioWare is random, weird, funny, crazy.  The sequels are pretty much the exact same, and though they switch it up with motion controls (as in Twisted! and Smooth Moves!), I never really got into them quite as much as the original.